ENDEAVOURS 


AFTER     THE 


CHRISTIAN    LIFE 


FIRST   SERIES. 


ENDEAVOURS 


AFTER     THE 


CHRISTIAN  LIFE. 


DISCOURSES 


BT 


JAMES   MARTINEAU. 


1  Je  sais  que  Dieu  a  voulu  que  les  verites  divines  entrant  du  coeur  dans  1'esprit,  et  non 
pas  de  1'esprit  dans  le  coeur.  Et  de  la  vient  qu'au  lieu  qu'en  parlant  des  choses  hu- 
maines,  on  dit  qu'U  faut  les  connaitre  avant  que  de  les  aimer  ;  les  Saints,  au  contraire, 
disent,  en  parlant  des  choses  divines,  qu'il  faut  les  aimer  pour  les  connaitre,  et 
qu'on  n'entre  dans  les  verite  que  par  la  charite.'  —  Pascal.  Pensees. 


NEW    EDITION. 


BOSTON  AND  CAMBRIDGE  : 
JAMES    MUNROE    AND    COMPANY. 

M  DCCC  LVIII. 


CAMBRIDGE: 
THORSTOIJ  AND  TORRY,  PRINTERS. 


PUBLISHERS'   PREFACE. 


THE  following  Discourses  were  originally  published  in 
two  volumes,  with  an  interval  of  some  ten  years  in  their 
appearance.  For  greater  convenience  they  are  now  issued 
in  a  single  volume.  In  all  other  respects  they  are  repro- 
duced, with  the  motto,  prefaces,  dedication,  and  order  of 
succession  as  first  arranged  by  the  author  himself. 

In  presenting  to  the  American  public  a  new  edition  of 
the  '  Endeavor's  after  the  Christian  Life,'  the  publishers  beg 
leave  to  ask  to  them  the  attention  of  all  unsectarian  admir- 
ers of  religious  genius,  wisdom,  and  eloquence.  They  can- 
not forbear  saying,  even  at  the  risk  of  indelicacy,  that  they 
believe  that  all  competent  readers  will  find  lofty  intellect, 
profound  experience,  commanding  imagination,  analytic 
power,  devout  tenderness,  unfaltering  sincerity,  artistic 
skill,  and  consecrating  purity  of  purpose,  blended  in  these 
sermons  in  a  degree  hardly  to  be  rivalled.  Beyond  any 
mere  business  regard  it  is  a  privilege  to  be  instrumental  in 
circulating  or  winning  attention  to  such  writings. 

Boston,  November,  1857. 


22?OS23 


PREFACE  TO  FIRST  SERIES. 


IN  a  little  work*  published  seven  years  ago,  the  Author 
of  the  following  Discourses  intimated  a  desire  to  work  out 
for  himself  and  present  to  his  readers,  a  distinct  answer  to 
the  question,  'What  is  Christianity?'  and  the  work  then 
put  forth  was  designed  as  a  mere  preliminary  to  another,  in 
which  this  great  inquiry  should  be  presented.  The  purpose 
then  announced  still  remains,  and  the  materials  for  its 
execution  are  for  the  most  part  prepared.  The  present 
volume,  however,  is  not  offered  as  any  part  of  its  fulfilment, 
but  rather  in  temporary  apology  for  its  non-fulfilment. 

Of  his  reasons  for  withholding  for  a  time  that  promised 
volume,  this  is  not  the  proper  place  to  speak  at  any  length. 
A  change  in  some  of  his  views,  and  the  consciousness  of 
immaturity  in  others,  have  certainly  had  a  share  of  influence 
in  producing  the  postponement.  But  it  has  been  occasioned 
chiefly  by  his  desire  to  lay  aside  for  awhile  the  polemical 
character,  which  necessity,  not  choice,  has  impressed  upon 
his  former  writings ;  and  which,  until  relieved  by  some 
task  of  higher  spirit,  misrepresents  the  order  of  his  con- 
victions, —  engaging  him  upon  the  outward  form  of  Chris- 
tian belief,  while  silent  of  the  inner  heart  of  human  life  and 
faith. 

Of  his  reasons  for  presenting  this  promised  volume,  the 
Author  has  but  few  words  to  say.  As  its  contents  were 

*The  Rationale  of  Religious  Enquiry;  or  the  Question  stated  of  Rea- 
son, the  Bible,  and  the  Church. 


X  PREFACE  TO  FIRST  SERIES. 

written,  so  are  they  now  published,  because  he  takes  them 
to  be  true,  and  good  to  be  recognized  as  true  by  the  con- 
sciousness of  all  men;  and  not  having  been  produced  as 
fask-work,  but  out  of  an  earnest  heart,  they  may  possibly 
find  a  reader  here  and  there,  to  whom  they  speak  a  fitting 
and  faithful  word.  Should  the  book  avail  for  this,  it  will 
sufficiently  justify  its  appearance;  should  it  not,  it  will 
speedily  disappear,  and  at  least  no  harm  be  done. 

No  formal  connection  will  be  found  among  the  several 
Discourses  in  this  volume.  Prepared  at  different  times, 
and  in  different  moods  of  meditation,  they  are  related  to 
each  other  only  by  their  common  direction  towards  the 
great  ends  of  responsible  existence.  The  title,  indeed,  ex- 
presses the  spirit,  more  than  the  matter,  of  the  book ;  — 
which,  « endeavors '  to  produce  rather  than  describe,  the 
essential  temper  of  '  the  Christian  life.' 

The  Author  would  have  introduced  a  larger  number  of 
Discourses  having  direct  reference,  in  word  as  well  as  in 
spirit,  to  the  divine  Ministry  of  Christ,  did  he  not  hope  to 
follow  up  the  present  volume  by  another  devoted  especially 
to  this  subject,  and  a  third  on  the  Christianity  of  Paul.  In 
the  meanwhile,  he  trusts  that  those'  who,  in  devout  reading 
of  books  and  men,  look  for  that  rather  which  is  Christian, 
than  which  talks  of  Christianity,  will  find  in  this  little 
volume  no  faint  impression  of  the  religion  by  which  he,  no 
less  than  they,  desires  to  live  and  die. 

Liverpool,  June  20,  1843. 


CONTENTS  TO  FIRST  SERIES. 


PAGB 

I.    THE   SPIRIT  OF  LIFE  IN  JESUS  CHRIST     ....  25 

II.    THE   BESETTING   GOD 38 

III.  GREAT  PRINCIPLES  AND  SMALL  DUTIES                ...  48 

IV.  EDEN  AND  GETHSEMANE 59 

V.    SORROW  NO  SIN 70 

VI.    CHRISTIAN  PEACE   .......  80 

Til.    RELIGION  ON  FALSE  PRETENCES 92 

VIII.    MAMMON  WORSHIP *  .  104 

IX.   THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD  WITHIN  US.      PART  I.    .            .            .  115 

X.  THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD  WITHIN  US.      PART  II.          .            .  127 

XI.  THE  CONTENTMENT  OP  SORROW 139 

XII.    IMMORTALITY 150 

XIII.    THE   COMMUNION  OF  SAINTS              .....  164 

xiv.  CHRIST'S  TREATMENT  OF  GUILT         ....  176 

XT.   THE  STRENGTH  OF  THE  LONELY 188 

XVI.    HAND  AND  HEART 199 

XVII.    SILENCE  AND  MEDITATION 211 

XTIII.   WINTER  WORSHIP 223 

XIX.    THE  GREAT  YEAR  OF  PROVIDENCE             ....  235 

XX.  CHRIST  AND  THE  LITTLE  CHILD             ....  250 

XXI.  THE  CHRISTIANITY  OF  OLD  AGE 261 

XXII.   NOTHING   HUMAN  EVER  DIES                                         .           .  273 


DISCOURSES. 


i. 

THE   SPIRIT   OF   LIFE   IN   JESUS  CHRIST. 

ROMANS  TII.  2. 
THE  LAW  OF  THE  SPIRIT  OF  LIFE  IN  JESUS  CHRIST. 

1  A  MAN,'  says  the  Apostle  Paul,  '  is  the  image  and 
glory  of  God.'  And  truly,  it  is  from  our  own 
human  nature,  from  its  deep  experiences,  and  ear- 
nest affections,  that  we  form  our  conceptions  of 
Deity,  and  become  qualified  to  interpret  the  solemn 
intimations  which  creation  and  scripture  afford  to  us 
respecting  him.  Without  the  stirrings  of  divine 
qualities  within  us,  without  some  consciousness  of 
that  which  we  ascribe  to  the  all-perfect,  the  names 
and  descriptions  by  which  he  is  made  known  to  us 
would  be  empty  words,  as  idly  sent  to  us  as  treatises 
of  sound  to  the  deaf,  or  some  '  high  discourse  of 
reason'  to  the  fool.  All  that  we  believe  without 
us,  we  feel  within  us;  and  it  is  the  one  sufficient 
proof  of  the  grandeur  and  awfulness  of  our  nature, 
that  we  have  faith  in  God ;  for  no  merely  finite 
being  can  possibly  believe  the  infinite.  The  uni- 
•verse  of  which  each  man  conceives,  exists  primarily 
3 


26  THE    SPIRIT    OF    LIFE 

in  his  own  mind ;  there  dwell  the  Angel  he  enthrones 
in  the  height,  and  the  Demon  he  covers  with  the 
deep ;  and  vainly  would  he  talk  of  shunning  hell, 
who  never  felt  its  fires  in  his  bosom ;  or  he  converse 
of  heaven,  whose  soul  was  never  pure  and  green  as 
Paradise. 

In  virtue  of  this  resemblance  between  the  human 
and  the  divine  mind,  Christ  is  the  representative  and 
revealer  of  both.  God,  by  the  very  immensity  of  his 
nature,  is  a  stationary  being,  —  perfect,  and  there- 
fore unchangeable ;  and  so  far  as  Jesus  Christ  was 
'  the  same  yesterday,  to-day  and  for  ever ; '  so  far  as 
one  uniform  mind  and  power  possessed  him,  as  one 
sacred  purpose  was  impressed  upon  his  life;  so  far 
is  he  the  emblem  of  Deity ;  affording  us,  in  speech,  in 
feeling,  in  will,  in  act,  an  idea  of  God,  which  nothing 
borrowed  from  material  creation  or  mortal  life  can 
at  all  approach.  His  unity  of  soul,  the  unalterable 
spirit  pervading  all  his  altering  moods  of  thought, — 
in  short,  his  identity  with  himself,  is  altogether  divine. 
In  so  far,  on  the  other  hand,  as  he  underwent  vicissi- 
tudes of  emotion,  —  in  so  far  as  he  spake,  thought, 
acted  differently  in  different  periods  of  his  career,  and 
a  changed  hue  of  soul  came  over  him,  and  threw 
across  the  world  before  him  a  brighter  or  a  sadder 
shade, —  so  far  is  he  the  ideal  and  picture  of  the  mind 
of  Man.  His  self-variations  are  altogether  human. 

The  casual  vicissitudes  of  feeling  in  Christ,  his 
alternations  of  anxiety  and  hope,  of  rejoicing  and  of 
tears,  have  often  been  appealed  to,  as  traces  of 
his  having  had  a  like  nature  with  our  own.  The 
appeal  is  just;  and  shows  us  that  he  was  impressed, 
as  we  are,  by  those  outward  incidents  which  may 
make  the  morning  happy  and  the  evening  sad.  But 


IX    JESUS    CHRIST.  27 

besides  these  accidental  agitations,  which  follow  the 
complexion  of  our  external  lot,  there  is  a  far  more 
important  set  of  changes,  which  the  affections  and 
character  undergo  from  internal  causes  :  which  occur 
in  regular  succession,  marking  and  characterizing  the 
different  periods  of  mental,  if  not  physical  life ;  and 
constitute  the  stages  of  moral  development  through 
which  the  noblest  minds  visibly  pass  to  their  perfec- 
tion. The  incidental  fluctuations  of  emotion  raised 
by  the  good  or  evil  tidings  of  the  hour,  are  but  as 
the  separate  waves  which  the  passing  wind  may 
soothe  to  a  ripple  or  press  into  a  storm  ;  but  the 
seasonal  changes  of  character,  of  which  I  now  speak, 
are  rather  the  great  tidal  movements  of  the  deep 
within  us,  depending  on  less  capricious  forces  than 
the  transient  gale,  and  bearing  on  their  surface  the 
mere  film  of  tempest  or  of  calm.  The  succession 
is  distinctly  traceable  in  the  mind  of  Christ,  making 
his  life  a  model  of  moral  progression  the  most 
impressive  and  sublime.  He  thus  becomes  in  a 
new  sense  the  representative  of  ou\*  duty,  our  visible 
and  outward  conscience:  revealing  to  us  not  only  the 
end  to  which  we  must  attain,  but  the  successive  steps 
by  which  our  nature  reaches  it ;  the  process  as  well 
as  the  result;  the  natural  history  of  the  affections 
which  belongs  to  the  true  perfection  of  the  will.  He 
is  the  type  of  the  pure  religious  life  ;  all  its  develop- 
ments being  crowded,  by  the  rapid  ripening  of  his 
soul,  into  his  brief  experience  ;  and  we  read  in  the 
gospel  a  divine  allegory  of  humanity,  symbolical  of 
those  profound  and  silent  changes,  of  passion  and 
speculation,  of  faith  and  love,  through  which  a  holy 
mind  rises  to  its  most  godlike  power. 

I   propose   to    follow  Jesus   through    the   several 


28  THE    SPIRIT    OF    LIFE 

periods,  so  far  as  they  appear,  of  his  outward  and 
inward  history ;  and  to  show  the  correspondence 
between  their  order  and  the  successive  stages  of 
growth  in  a  religious  and  holy  soul. 

The  only  incident  recorded  of  the  childhood  of  Jesus 
strikingly  commences  the  analogy  between  his  nature 
and  ours,  and  happily  introduces  him  to  us  as  the 
representative  of  the  great  ideas  of  duty  and  God 
within  the  soul.  The  annual  pilgrimage  from  his  vil- 
lage to  the  holy  city,  which  had  hitherto  been  the 
child's  holiday,  full  only  of  the  wonder  and  delight  of 
travel,  seized  hold,  on  one  occasion,  of  deeper  feelings, 
which  absorbed  him  with  their  new  intensity.  The 
visit  which  had  become  conventional  with  others, 
appeared  at  once  with  its  full  meaning  to  him ;  and 
with  the  surprise  of  a  fresh  reverence,  he  turned  from 
the  gay  streets,  and  the  sunny  excursion,  and  the 
social  entertainment,  to  the  quiet  courts  of  the 
temple,  where  the  ancient  story  of  miracle  was  told, 
and  the  mystery  of  prophecy  explained.  Eager  to 
prolong  this  new  and  solemn  interest,  he  missed,  you 
will  remember,  the  opportunity  of  travelling  back 
with  the  caravan  of  Nazareth  ;  and  when  told  by  his 
parents,  on  their  return  in  quest  of  him,  '  Thy  father 
and  mother  have  sought  thee  sorrowing,'  he  replied, 
with  a  tone  not  altogether  filial,  '  Know  ye  not  that 
I  must  be  about  my  Father's  business? ' 

The  answer  is  wonderfully  expressive  of  the  spirit 
of  young  piety,  taking  its  first  dignity  as  an  indepen- 
dent principle  of  action  in  the  mind.  The  lessons 
of  devotion  are,  for  a  long  time,  adopted  passively, 
with  listening  faith ;  the  great  ideas  dwindling,  as 
they  fall  from  the  teacher's  lips,  to  the  dimensions  of 
the  infant  mind  receiving  them.  When  the  mother 


IN    JESUS    CHRIST.  29 

calls  her  children  to  her  knees  to  speak  to  them  of 
God,  she  is  herself  the  greatest  object  in  their  affec- 
tions. It  is  by  her  power  over  them  that  God 
becomes  Venerable ;  by  the  purity  of  her  eye  that 
he  becomes  Holy  ;  by  the  silence  of  the  hour  that  he 
becomes  Awful ;  by  the  tenderness  of  her  tones  that 
he  becomes  Dear.  That  the  parents  bend,  with 
lowly  look  and  serene  result,  before  some  invisible 
Presence,  is  the  first  and  sufficient  hint  to  the  heart's 
latent  faith ;  which  therefore  blends  awhile  with  the 
domestic  sympathies,  simply  mingling  with  them  an 
element  of  mystery,  and  imparting  to  them  a  deeper 
and  less  earthy  coloring.  But  the  thoughts  which 
constitute  religion  are  too  vast  and  solemn  to  remain 
subordinate.  They  are  germs  of  a  growth,  which, 
with  true  nurture,  must  burst  into  independent  life, 
and  overshadow  the  whole  soul.  When  the  mind, 
beginning  to  be  busy  for  itself,  ponders  the  ideas  of  the 
infinite  and  eternal,  it  detects,  as  if  by  sudden  inspira- 
tion, the  immensity  of  the  relations  which  it  sustains  to 
God  and  immortality :  the  old  formulas  of  religious 
instruction  break  their  husk,  and  give  forth  the  seeds 
of  wonder  and  of  love ;  everything  that  seemed  before 
great  and  worthy  is  dwarfed  ;  and  human  affinities 
and  duties  sink  into  nothingness  compared  with  the 
heavenly  world  which  has  been  discovered.  There 
is  a  period,  when  earnest  spirits  become  thus  posses- 
sed ;  disposed  to  contrast  the  grandeur  of  their  new 
ideal  with  the  littleness  of  all  that  is  actual ;  and  to 
look  with  a  sublimated  feeling,  which  in  harsher 
natures  passes  into  contempt,  on  pursuits  and  rela- 
tions once  sufficient  for  the  heart's  reverence.  At 
such  a  crisis  it  was  that  Jesus  gave  the  answer  to 
his  parents ;  when  his  piety  first  broke  into  original 
8» 


30  THE    SPIEIT    OF    XIFE 

and  self-luminous  power,  and  not  only  took  the 
centre  of  his  system,  but  threatened  to  put  out  those 
lesser  and  dependent  lights  which,  when  their  place 
is  truly  understood,  appear  no  less  heavenly.  He 
spake  in  the  entranced  and  exclusive  spirit  of  young 
devotion.  Well  then  may  we  bear  with  the  rebukes 
which  this  earnest  temper  is  sometimes  impelled  to 
administer  :  for  by  a  mental  neccesity,  all  strong  feel- 
ing must  be  exclusive,  till  wisdom  and  experience 
have  trained  it;  till  the  worth  of  many  things  has 
been  ascertained;  till  God  is  seen,  not  sitting  aloof 
from  his  creation  to  show  how  contemptible  it  is,  but 
pervading  it  to  give  it  sanctity ;  till  it  is  found  how 
much  that  is  human  is  also  divine.  None  learned 
this  so  soon  or  so  profoundly  as  Jesus.  And  even 
now,  the  very  sight  of  home  restored  his  household 
sympathies  again ;  for  when  he  went  to  Nazareth 
with  his  parents,  '  he  was  obedient  unto  them  ;  and 
increased  in  favor'  with  '  man  '  as  well  as  '  God.' 

Nearly  twenty  years  elapsed.  Boyhood  passed 
without  events.  The  slight  flush  of  the  youthful 
soul  had  fled.  Vainly  did  Mary  notice  how  a  light, 
as  from  within,  came  upon  his  features,  as  he  bent 
over  his  daily  toil,  or  forced  him  to  pause,  as  if  in 
some  secret  and  ineffable  colloquy.  Though  the  life 
of  God  within  him  was  strong  enough  to  win  the 
world,  and  give  direction  to  its  reverence  for  ever,  he 
was  a  villager  still,  serving  the  same  necessities,  and 
pacing  the  same  track  of  custom  as  others.  It  was 
inevitable  that  the  spiritual  force  within  him  should 
make  insurrection  against  the  narrow  and  cramping 
conditions  by  which  it  was  confined;  that  it  should 
strive  to  burst  its  fetters,  and  find  or  create  a  career 
worthy  of  itself:  in  short,  that  we  should  find  Jesus 


IN    JESUS    CHKIST.  31 

no  longer  at  Nazareth,  but  in  the  wilderness ;  led 
thither  in  spite  of  himself,  of  interest  and  comfort, 
of  habit  and  home,  by  the  beckoning  of  the  divine 
image  in  his  heart.  That  solitude  he  was  impelled 
to  seek,  that  he  might  grapple  face  to  face  with  the 
evil  and  earthly  spirits  that  beset  our  path,  disengage 
himself  from  the  encumbrances  of  usage  and  of 
doubt,  and  struggle  into  a  life  befitting  one  who 
stands  in  immensity  and  dwells  with  God.  To  the 
eye  of  the  outward  observer  he  may  appear  alto- 
gether quiet,  sitting  on  the  bleak  rock  in  the  collapse 
of  feebleness  and  rest.  Nevertheless,  in  that  still 
form,  is  the  most  terrible  of  conflicts ;  an  exchange 
of  awful  defiances  between  Heaven  and  Hell;  a 
heaving  and  wrestling  of  immortal  powers,  doing 
battle  for  the  mind  of  Jesus,  and  suspending  on  that 
moment  the  souls  of  millions  and  the  destinies  of 
the  world.  His  holy  spirit  won  the  victory;  the 
angels  of  peace  and  power  led  him  forth ;  and  the 
transition  was  made  from  the  obscurity  of  ordinary 
toil  to  the  glory  of  his  everlasting  ministry. 

Now  in  the  development  of  all  earnest  and  noble 
minds  there  is  a  passage  corresponding  with  this 
scene.  There  is  a  time  when  their  image  of  Duty 
grows  too  large  for  the  accidental  lot  in  which  it  is 
encased,  and  seeks  to  burst  it;  when  human  life 
changes  its  aspect  before  the  eye ;  and  custom  can 
no  longer  show  it  to  us  as  a  flat  dull  field,  where  we 
may  plough,  and  build,  and  find  shelter  and  sleep ; 
but  it  swells  into  verdant  slopes,  that  lie  around  the 
base  of  everlasting  hills,  whose  summit  no  man  can 
discern,  passing  away  as  a  dim  shape  into  the  blue 
infinite  where  not  a  cloud  can  linger.  There  is  a 
crisis  when  every  faithful  son  of  God  is  agitated  by 


32  THE    SPIRIT    OP    LIFE 

a  fierce  controversy  between  the  earthly  and  the  di- 
vine elements  of  his  nature.  Self  and  the  flesh 
seductively  whisper,  '  Thou  hast  a  life  of  many 
necessities ;  earn  thy  bread  and  eat  it ;  and  pay  thy- 
self for  all  thy  trouble  with  a  warm  hearth  and  a 
soft  bed.'  The  voice  of  God  thunders  in  reply, 
'  Thy  life  is  short,  thy  work  is  great,  thy  God  is  near, 
thy  heaven  is  far;  do  I  not  send  thee  forth,  armed 
with  thought,  and  speech,  and  a  strong  right  hand, 
to  contend  with  the  evil  and  avenge  the  good? 
Indulge  no  more,  or  I  shall  leave  thee ;  do  thy  best, 
and  faint  not ;  take  up  thy  freewill,  and  come  with 
me.'  By  some  such  conflict  does  every  great  mind 
quit  its  ease  to  serve  its  responsibilities  ;  part,  if  need 
be,  with  the  sympathy  of  friends  and  the  security  of 
neighborhood,  in  fidelity  to  duty ;  and  suffer  wasting 
and  loneliness,  as  in  the  bleakest  desert,  till  tempta- 
tion be  vanquished,  and  hesitancy  flung  aside. 

The  course  of  Jesus  was  now  taken.  The  peasant 
had  assumed  the  prophet's  mantle  and  Messiah's 
power.  How  calm  and  free  his  mind  had  thus  be- 
come, how  unembarrassed  it  dwelt  in  the  pure 
atmosphere  of  its  own  convictions,  is  evident  from 
this ;  that  to  his  own  village  he  went,  and  announced 
the  change.  In  the  very  synagogue  where  parents 
and  neighbors  worshipped,  and  aged  knees  to  which 
he  had  clung  in  infant  sport  were  bent  in  prayer ; 
where  his  ear  had  first  heard  the  music,  and  his  soul 
felt  the  sublimity  of  ancient  prophecy,  there,  '  He 
opened  the  book,  and  found  the  place  where  it  was 
written,  "  The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me,  be- 
cause he  hath  anointed  me  to  preach  glad  tidings  to 
the  poor;  he  hath  sent  me  to  proclaim  liberty  to  the 
captives,  and  recovery  of  sight  to  the  blind;  to  let 


IN   JESTTS    CHRIST.  33 

the  oppressed  go  free,  to  proclaim  the  acceptable 
year  of  the  Lord." '  No  wonder  that  as  he  spake  in 
comment  worthy  of  such  a  text,  his  hearers  '  were 
astonished  at  the  gracious  words  that  proceeded  from 
his  lips.'  The  moment  introduced,  and  fitly  repre- 
sents, the  first  era  of  his  ministry ;  during  the  whole 
of  which  a  joyous  inspiration  was  on  him.  No  sad 
forebodings  visited  him ;  no  doubts  restrained  his 
freedom  ;  no  tears  gushed  forth  to  check  his  voice  of 
mercy  and  delay  his  word  of  power.  It  was  a  hope- 
ful and  vigorous  career ;  crowded  with  blessed  deeds, 
and  flushed  with  countless  benedictions,  that  only 
kindled  him  to  an  alacrity  more  godlike.  Nay,  it 
seemed  impossible  for  him  to  bear  his  own  messages 
of  love  fast  enough ;  and  first  the  Twelve,  and  then 
the  Seventy,  were  sent  successively  forth  on  a  syste- 
matic mission,  to  multiply  his  power,  and  make  ready 
the  paths  of  peace.  The  report  of  the  Seventy,  on 
their  return,  declares  the  triumph  of  his  name  and 
spirit,  not  only  in  the  conquest  of  disease,  but  in  the 
attachment  of  the  poor  and  the  oppressed  ;  and  with 
the  glow  of  the  glad  devotion  that  marks  this  period, 
Jesus  exclaimed,  '  I  beheld  Satan,  as  lightning  fall 
from  heaven.'  The  Twelve  brought  far  different 
tidings,  which  changed  again  the  colors  of  his  life. 

Who  does  not  discern,  in  the  history  of  every  faith- 
ful mind,  a  period  like  this  ?  —  a  period  immediately 
following  the  solemn  league  and  covenant  which  we 
make  with  Duty.  Through  sore  and  dark  tempta- 
tions the  Christian  first  emerges  into  the  freewill,  by 
which  he  stands  up  and  lives  in  the  likeness  of  God ; 
and  then,  in  the  joy  of  his  freedom  and  sincerity, 
he  springs,  with  self-precipitation,  into  the  mission 
heaven  assigns.  That  which  he  speaks,  is  it  not 


34  THE    SPIHIT    OF    LIFE 

true?  that  which  he  feels,  is  holy;  that  which  he 
desires,  is  great  and  good.  He  loves  the  souls  be 
would  convert,  and  knows  them  of  the  same  family 
with  his  own.  He  has  conquered  in  himself  the 
weakness  and  the  ills  with  which  he  wars  in  others  ; 
and  shall  he  not  have  faith  ?  God  is  vaster  than  the 
most  gigantic  wrongs ;  and  his  righteousness,  which 
is  as  the  great  mountains,  will  speedily  suppress  them 
in  the  abyss.  In  the  power  of  this  glorious  faith,  the 
true  servant  and  prophet  of  the  Lord  goes  forth; 
makes  a  generous  and  confident  rush  upon  evil ;  and, 
since  it  is  the  Immortal  against  the  Perishable,  he 
trusts  to  sweep  it  off  and  triumph  in  its  flight.  But 
alas!  the  time  is  short,  the  conflict  long;  and  faint 
and  bleeding,  he  discovers  that  he  must  fall,  before 
the  cry  of  victory.  And  yet  was  that  faith  of  his 
most  true.  Its  computation  of  forces  was  most  un- 
erring ;  for  always  shall  evil  be  overcome  by  good ; 
with  mistake,  you  will  say,  in  its  dates ;  but  that  is 
only  the  prophet's  mistake,  that  sees  the  future  as 
the  present,  and  considers  the  certainties  of  God 
superior  to  time.  Thus  right-souled  man  has  up- 
lifted his  arm,  and  done  a  faithful  work ;  and  the 
efforts  of  the  wise  and  holy  are  not  mere  momentary 
strokes,  dissipated  and  lost ;  but  an  everlasting  pres- 
sure upon  ill,  with  tension  increasing  without  end, 
till  it  drives  the  monstrous  mass  across  the  brink  of 
annihilation. 

Sad,  however,  is  the  hour  when  generous  hope  re- 
ceives its  first  check;  and  with  mournful  attention 
Jesus  hears,  on  the  return  of  the  Twelve,  tidings  of 
hostility  and  danger,  forcing  on  him  the  conviction, 
that  he  must  die :  tidings  especially  of  the  vigilance 
of  Herod,  recent  murderer  of  John  the  Baptist.  The 


IN    JESUS    CHBIST.  35 

shock  was  somewhat  sudden.  He  retreated  into 
solitude  among  the  hills,  that  he  might  feel  awhile, 
without  obstruction,  the  refuge  of  his  disciples' 
friendship  and  his  Father's  power.  And  soon  in  the 
Transfiguration,  where  his  mind  conversed  with 
prophets  of  an  elder  age,  the  impression  of  his  de- 
cease, as  the  penalty  of  his  faithfulness,  becomes 
finally  fixed.  Thenceforth,  as  it  seems  to  me,  not 
only  did  his  views  and  expectations  undergo  a  great 
change,  and  receive  a  large  accession  of  truth,  but 
the  spirit  and  moral  tone  of  his  ministry  was  differ- 
ent. Steadfast  as  before,  even  to  '  set  his  face  to  go 
to  Jerusalem,'  he  is  less  joyous  and  more  serene ; 
more  earnest  and  lofty,  as  if  his  great  aims  had  be- 
come sublimer  for  the  distance  to  which  they  had 
receded,  and  dearer  for  the  price  at  which  they  must 
be  gained ;  more  prone  to  tears,  when  asked  for  by 
the  griefs  of  others,  more  driven  to  prayer  in  wrest- 
ling with  his  own.  If  his  deeds  of  power,  —  which 
by  their  nature  must  be  self -repetitions, —  are  less 
frequent,  he  gives  himself  more  to  speech,  varying 
ever  those  words  of  eternal  life  from  which  all  ages 
learn  divinest  wisdom.  And  so  he  passes  on  to  his 
crucifixion ;  numbering  the  days  only  by  the  duties 
that  remain  ;  devoting  himself  to  the  crowds  of  Jeru- 
salem by  day,  and  to  the  family  of  Bethany  at  even ; 
in  the  morning  teaching  in  the  temple,  and  predicting 
its  fall  at  night ;  blessing  the  widow's  charity ;  laying 
bare  the  priest's  hypocrisy ;  found  by  his  conspirators 
at  midnight  prayer ;  in  the  trial,  concerned  for  Peter ; 
in  the  hall,  convulsing  the  conscience  of  Pilate ;  on 
the  fatal  road,  turning  with  pity  to  the  daughters  of 
Jerusalem ;  and  not  exclaiming,  '  It  is  finished,'  till 
from  the  cross  he  looked  on  a  mother  for  whom  he 


36  THE    SPIEIT    OF    LIFE 

found  a  home,  and  a  disciple  whom  he  made  blessed 
by  his  trust. 

And  even  this  last  change  in  Christ  appears  to  be 
not  a  mere  external  modification,  but  an  internal 
ripening  of  his  perfect  character,  the  last  unfolding  of 
its  progressive  beauty ;  to  which  also  there  is  a  cor- 
responding stage,  wherever  the  true  religious  life 
fulfils  its  course.  When  the  first  sanguine  enter- 
prises of  conscience  seem  to  fail  (though  fail  they 
cannot,  except  to  live  as  fast  as  our  impatient  fancies) ; 
when  a  cloud,  like  that  which  fell  upon  Christ's  future, 
descends  upon  the  prospects  of  the  good ;  when  the 
evils,  against  which  he  has  taken  up  his  vow,  with- 
stand the  siege  of  his  enthusiasm,  and  years  ebb 
away,  and  strength  departs,  with  no  visible  impression 
made ;  and  friends  become  treacherous,  and  foes 
alert,  and  God's  good  Providence  seems  tedious  and 
cruel,  —  then  weak  spirits  may  succumb,  able  to  keep 
faith  alive  no  more;  and  even  the  man  mighty  of 
heart  may  find  the  controversy  great,  whether  to  go 
on  and  bear  up  against  such  sorrow  of  the  soul.  But 
if  he  be  wise,  he  clings  more  firmly  to  his  fidelity,  and 
thinks  more  truly  of  his  mission,  wherein  he  is  ap- 
pointed not  to  do  much,  but  to  do  well.  He  too  takes 
counsel  of  the  prophets  of  old,  —  the  sainted  spirits 
of  the  good,  who  rebuke  his  impatience,  and  tell  him 
that  they  followed  each  other  at  intervals  of  centu- 
ries, and  as  they  found,  so  after  true  service  did  they 
leave,  the  mighty  work  of  good  undone ;  that  the 
fruits  of  heaven  will  not  ripen  in  some  sunny  hour ; 
but  every  noble  mind  must  lend  its  transitory  ray ; 
and  then,  when  the  full  year  of  Providence  has  gone 
its  round,  perchance  the  collective  sunshine  of  hu- 
manity may  have  matured  the  produce  of  the  tree  of 


IN    JESUS    CHEIST.  37 

life.  Such  communion  does  indeed  speak  to  him  of 
his  'decease  which  he  must  accomplish;'  asks  him 
to  join  the  glorious  succession  of  the  good ;  sends 
him  with  transfigured  spirit  back  into  the  field  of 
duty ;  gives  him  a  sadder  but  more  enduring  wisdom ; 
by  which,  with  or  without  hope,  in  or  out  of  peril,  he 
lives  and  labors  on ;  in  renouncing  power  and  suc- 
cess, winning  their  divinest  forms;  and  through  self- 
crucifixion  gifted  with  immortality. 


II. 

THE    BESETTING    GOD. 
PSALM  cxxxix.  5. 

THOU   HAST   BESET   1IE    BEHIND   AND    BEFORE,   AND   LAID   THINE 
HAND   UPON   ME. 

PERHAPS  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  represent  God  to 
our  minds  under  any  greater  Physical-  image,  than 
that  of  his  diffused  presence  through  every  region  of 
space.  Certainly,  to  feel  that  He  lives,  as  the  preci- 
pient  and  determining  agent,  throughout  the  universe, 
conscious  of  all  things  actual  or  possible  from  the 
vivid  centre  to  the  desert  margin  of  its  sphere,  exclu- 
ded from  neither  air,  nor  earth,  nor  sea,  nor  souls,  but 
clad  with  them  as  a  vestment,  and  gathering  up  their 
laws  within  his  being,  is  a  sublimer,  and  therefore 
a  truer  mode  of  thought,  than  the  conception  of  a 
remote  and  retired  mechanician,  inspecting  from 
without  the  engine  of  creation  to  see  how  it  per- 
forms. Indeed  this  mechanical  metaphor,  so  skilfully 
elaborated  by  Paley,  appears  to  be  of  all  representa- 
tions of  the  divine  nature  the  least  religious  ;  its  very 
clearness  proclaiming  its  insufficiency  for  those  affec- 
tions which  seek,  not  the  finite,  but  the  infinite  ;  its 
coldness  repelling  all  emotions,  and  reducing  them  to 
physiological  admiration :  and  its  scientific  procedure 
presenting  the  Creator  to  us  in  a  relation  quite  too 
mean,  as  one  of  the  causes  in  creation,  to  whom  a 


THE    BESETTING    GOD.  39 

chapter  might  be  devoted  in  any  treatise  on  dyna- 
mics ;  and  on  evidence  quite  below  the  real,  as  a 
highly  probable  God.  The  true  natural  language  of 
devotion  speaks  out  rather  in  the  poetry  of  the 
Psalmist  and  the  prayers  of  Christ ;  declares  the 
living  contact  of  the  Divine  Spirit  with  the  human, 
the  mystic  implication  of  his  nature  with  ours,  and 
ours  with  his  ;  his  serenity  amid  our  griefs,  his  sanc- 
tity amid  our  guilt,  his  wakefulness  in  our  sleep,  his 
life  through  our  death,  his  silence  amid  our  stormy 
force ;  and  refers  to  him  as  the  Absolute  basis  of  all 
relative  existence;  all  else  being  in  comparison  but 
phantasm  and  shadow,  and  He  alone  the  real  and 
Essential  Life. 

Were  we  to  insist  on  philosophical  correctness  of 
speech  in  matters  transcending  all  our  modes  of  defi- 
nition, we  should  reject,  as  irrational  and  in  truth 
unmeaning,  the  question  respecting  any  Spiritual 
being,  '•where  is  he?'  Local  position,  physical  pres- 
ence, is  a  relation  of  material  things,  and  cannot  be 
affirmed  of  Mind,  without  confounding  it  with  the 
body.  Thought,  will,  love,  which  have  no  size  and 
take  up  no  space,  can  be  in  no  spot,  and  move  to 
none ;  and  to  the  souls  of  which  these  are  attributes 
we  can  ascribe  neither  habitation  nor  locomotion.  It  is 
only  the  bodily  effects,  and  outward  manifestations 
of  mental  force, —  the  gestures  of  the  visible  frame 
and  the  actions  of  the  solid  limbs, —  to  which  place 
can  be  assigned  ;  and  when  we  say,  that  we  are  here 
and  not  there,  it  is  to  this  organic  system  connected 
with  our  spiritual  nature,  and  to  this  alone,  that  we 
refer.  Were  we  to  press  the  notion  further,  and  en- 
deavor to  settle  the  question,  where  our  minds  are, 
the  intrinsic  impropriety  of  the  question  would  leave 


40  THE    BESETTING    GOD. 

us  altogether  at  a  loss.  There  would  be  no  more 
reason  to  attribute  to  the  soul  a  residence  within  the 
body,  than  in  the  remotest  station  of  the  universe ; 
for  God  could  as  well  establish  a  constant  relation 
between  the  mind  and  the  organism  on  which  it  was 
to  act,  at  a  distance  thus  vast,  as  in  the  nearest  prox- 
imity; and  there  would  be  no  more  wonder  in  the 
movement  of  my  arm  on  earth  complying  with  my 
will  at  the  confines  of  the  solar  system,  than  in  the 
constant  rush  of  our  world  on  its  career,  in  obedience 
to  a  sun  separated  by  distance  so  immense.  It  may 
be,  after  all,  but  figuratively  that  we  speak  of  any 
migration  of  the  soul  in  death.  When  the  body 
appropriated  to  it  as  its  instrument  and  expression 
falls,  we  cannot  say  that  the  mind  is  here ;  we 
dream  of  what  we  know  not,  if  we  fancy  it  to  re- 
quire removal  in  order  to  present  itself  manifestly 
in  a  higher  region.  One  order  of  physical  relations 
being  dropped  here,  another  may  on  the  instant  be 
assumed  elsewhere,  revealing  the  spirit  to  a  new 
society,  and  giving  it  the  apparition  of  fresh  worlds. 

If  we  are  unable  to  speak,  otherwise  than  in 
figures,  of  the  place  of  our  minds,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  God's  -presence  is  quite  ineffable,  and  that  we 
bow  with  reverent  assent  to  the  poet's  admission, 
'  such  knowledge  is  too  wonderful  for  me.'  But  the 
confession  of  our  ignorance  once  made,  we  may  pro- 
ceed to  use  such  poor  thought  and  language  as  we 
find  least  unsuitable  to  so  high  a  matter ;  for  it  is 
the  essence  and  beginning  of  religion  to  feel,  that 
all  our  belief  and  speech  respecting  God  is  untrue, 
yet  infinitely  truer  than  any  non-belief  and  silence. 
In  whatever  sense  then,  and  on  whatever  grounds, 
we  affirm  the  tenancy  of  our  own  frame  by  the  soul 


THE    BESETTING    GOD.  41 

that  governs  it,  must  we  fill  the  universe  with  the 
everlasting  Spirit  of  whose  thought  it  is  the  develop- 
ment. His  agency  is  all-comprehending ;  and  de- 
clares itself  alike  before  us,  from  whichever  side  of 
the  world's  orbit,  from  whatever  phase  of  life  we 
survey  the  spectacle  of  the  heavens,  or  the  phenom- 
ena of  human  history ;  nor  can  we  help  regarding  the 
physical  laws  of  creation  (the  same  in  all  worlds)  as 
his  personal  habits;  the  moral  order  of  Providence 
as  the  unfolding  of  his  character;  the  forms  and  flush 
of  the  universal  beauty  as  the  effusion  of  his  art; 
the  griefs  and  joys,  the  temptations,  lapses  and  tri- 
umphs, and  all  the  glorious  strife  of  responsible 
natures,  as  the  energy  of  his  moral  sentiments,  and 
his  profuse  donation  of  a  divine  freewill.  It  is  true  we 
do  not  everywhere  alike  discern  him ;  but  this  is  our 
blindness,  and  not  his  darkness.  In  the  narrow  ways 
of  common  life,  amid  the  din  of  labor  and  traffic,  he 
seems  to  pass  away ;  though  it  were  well  that  his 
sanctity  should  be  nigh,  to  cool  the  heats,  and  guard 
the  purity,  of  our  toiling  and  tempted  hours.  But 
we  acknowledge  space  and  silence  to  be  his  Attri- 
butes ;  and  when  the  evening  dew  has  laid  the 
noon-day  dust  of  care,  and  the  vision  strained  by 
microscopic  anxieties  takes  the  wide  sweep  of  medi- 
tation, and  earth  sleeps  as  a  desert  beneath  the 
starry  Infinite,  the  unspeakable  Presence  wraps  us 
close  again,  and  startles  us  in  the  wild  night-wind, 
and  gazes  straight  into  our  eyes  from  those  ancient 
lights  of  heaven. 

And  to  that  same  Omnipresence  which  the  indi- 
vidual thinker  thus  consciously  realizes,  the  collective 
race  of  men  is  perpetually  bearing  an  unconscious 
testimony.     As  if  in  acknowledgment  of  the  mys- 
4* 


42  THE    BESETTING    GOD. 

tery  of  God,  as  with  an  instinctive  feeling  that  his 
being  is  the  meeting-place  of  light  and  shade,  and 
that  in  approaching  him  we  must  stand  on  the  con- 
fines between  the  seen  and  the  unseen ;  all  nations 
and  all  faiths  of  cultivated  men  have  chosen  the 
twilight  hour,  morning  and  evening,  for  their  devo- 
tion ;  and  so  it  has  happened  that,  all  round  the  earth, 
on  the  bordering  circle  between  the  darkness  and 
the  day,  a  zone  of  worshippers  has  been  ever  spread, 
looking  forth  for  the  Almighty  tenant  of  space,  one 
half  towards  the  East,  brilliant  with  dawn,  the  other 
into  the  hemisphere  of  night,  descending  on  the  West. 
The  veil  of  shadow,  as  it  shifts,  has  glanced  upon 
adoring  souls,  and  at  its  touch,  cast  down  a  fresh 
multitude  to  kneel ;  and  as  they  have  gazed  into  op- 
posite regions  for  their  God,  they  have  virtually  owned 
his  presence  '  besetting  them  behind  and  before.'  Our 
planet,  thus  instinct  with  devout  life,  girded  with 
intent  and  perceptive  souls,  covered  over,  as  with 
a  divine  retina,  by  the  purer  conscience  of  humanity, 
is  like  a  living  eye,  watching  on  every  side  the  im- 
mensity of  Deity  in  which  it  floats,  and  grateful  for 
the  rays  that  relieve  its  native  gloom.  We  some- 
times complain  of  the  conditions  of  our  being,  as 
unfavorable  to  the  discernment  and  the  love  of  God ; 
we  speak  of  him  as  veiled  from  us  by  our  senses,  and 
of  the  world  as  the  outer  region  of  exile  from  which 
he  is  peculiarly  hid.  In  imagining  what  is  holy  and 
divine  we  take  flight  to  other  worlds,  and  conceive 
that  there  the  film  must  fall  away,  and  all  adorable 
realities  burst  upon  the  sight.  Alas!  what  reason 
have  we  to  think  any  other  station  in  the  universe 
more  sanctifying  than  our  own  ?  There  is  none,  so 
far  as  we  can  tell,  under  the  more  immediate  touch 


THE    BESETTING    GOD.  43 

of  God;  none,  whence  sublimer  deeps  are  open  to 
adoration ;  none,  murmuring  with  the  whisper  of 
more  thrilling  affections,  or  ennobled  as  the  theatre 
of  more  glorious  duties.  The  dimness  we  deplore 
no  travelling  would  cure ;  the  most  perfect  of  obser- 
vatories will  not  serve  the  blind ;  we  carry  our  dark- 
ness with  us;  and  instead  of  wandering  to  fresh 
scenes,  and  blaming  our  planetary  atmosphere,  and 
flying  over  creation  for  a  purer  air,  it  behoves  us 
in  simple  faith,  to  sit  by  our  own  wayside  and  cry, 
*  Lord,  that  we  may  receive  our  sight.'  The  Psalm- 
ist found  no  fault  with  this  world  as  setting  God 
beyond  his  reach  ;  but  having  the  full  eye  of  his 
affections  opened  in  perpetual  vigil,  he  rather  was 
haunted  by  the  Omniscient  more  awfully  than  he 
could  well  bear,  and  would  fain  have  found  some 
shade,  though  it  were  in  darkness  or  the  grave,  from 
a  presence  so  piercing  and  a  light  so  clear.  Those  to 
whom  the  earth  is  not  consecrated,  will  find  their 
heaven  profane. 

God  '  besets  us  behind  and  before '  in  another 
sense.  He  pervades  the  successions  of  time  as  well 
as  the  fields  of  space,  and  occupies  eternity  no  less 
than  immensity.  The  imagination  faints  beneath 
the  weight  of  ages  which  crowd  upon  it  in  the  sim- 
plest meditation  on  his  being,  and  in  the  utterance 
of  the  most  familiar  of  our  prayers.  We  call  him 
the  '  God  of  our  fathers ;'  and  we  feel  that  there  is 
some  stability  at  centre,  while  we  can  tell  our  cares 
to  One  listening  at  our  right  hand,  by  whom  theirs 
are  remembered  and  removed;  who  yesterday  took 
pity  on  their  quaint  perplexities,  and  smiles  to-day 
on  ours,  not  wiser  yet,  but  just  as  bitter  and  as  real ; 
and  who  accepts  their  strains  of  happy  and  emanci- 


44  THE    BESETTING    GOD. 

pated  love,  while  putting  into  our  hearts  the  song  of 
exile  and  the  plaint  of  aspiration.  We  invoke  him 
as  the  'God  of  Jesus  ;'  and  so  doing,  we  have  contact 
with  a  Mind  yet  conscious  of  every  scene  in  the 
tragedy  of  Palestine,  wherein  the  shadows  of  the 
Lake-storm  are  uneffaced,  and  the  cry  of  the  cruci- 
fixion is  ringing  still.  We  speak  to  him  as  the 
'  Ancient  of  days ; '  and  so  converse  with  One  who 
feels  not  the  "gradations  of  intensity  that  make  dif- 
ference to  us  between  the  present  and  past,  with  a 
consciousness  that  has  no  perspective ;  and  we  rest 
on  the  surface  of  an  unfathomable  nature,  comprising 
without  confusion  the  undulation  of  all  events,  be  it 
the  tidal  sweep  of  centuries,  or  the  surges  of  a  na- 
tion's rage,  or  the  small  and  vivid  ripplings  of  private 
grief,  Nay,  we  pray  to  him  as  having  abode  lin 
heaven;'  and  we  cannot  lift  our  eye  to  that  pure 
vault,  without  thinking  how  old  are  those  stars  amid 
which  our  imagination  enspheres  him ;  how  they 
watched  over  patriarchs  in  the  plain  of  Mamre,  and 
paced  the  night  in  the  same  order,  and  with  like 
speed,  as  yesterday ;  how  they  were  ready  there  to 
meet  the  first  human  sight  that  was  turned  aloft  to 
gaze  ;  and  witnessed  those  primeval  revolutions  that, 
having  prepared  the  earth  for  men,  left  their  grotesque 
and  gigantic  vestiges  as  hieroglyphic  hints  to  carry 
him  back  into  the  waste  places  of  eternity,  and 
measure  for  him  God's  most  recent  step  out  of  the 
Everlasting.  How  do  the  most  vehement  forms  of 
history,  the  tempestuous  minds  that  from  any  other 
point  of  view  would  terrify  us  by  their  might,  —  the 
savage  hordes  that  have  swept  as  a  whirlwind  over 
the  patient  structure  of  civilization, —  how  do  they 
all,  in  this  contemplation,  dwindle  into  momentary 


THE    BESETTING    GOD.  45 

shapes,  angel  or  demon  spectres,  vividly  visible  and 
suddenly  submerged !  By  the  granite  pillars  of  God's 
eternity,  deep-rooted  in  the  abyss,  we  all  in  turn  climb 
to  the  surface  for  a  moment,  to  slip  again  into  the 
night.  But  during  the  moment  we  are  there,  if  we 
use  that  moment  well,  we  all  see  the  same  Presence ; 
turning  this  way  and  that,  we  perceive  only  that  he 
besets  us  behind  and  before.  The  Psalmist  came  up 
at  a  very  different  point  of  eternity  from  ourselves ; 
and  as  he  looked  fore  and  aft,  he  could  see  only  God. 
We,  who  are  presented  at  a  station  where  the  He- 
brew poet  himself  is  quite  invisible,  discern  on  every 
side  the  same  immensity  which  he  adored.  Well 
may  we  fall  down  and  worship  with  every  creature, 
'  Great  and  marvellous  are  thy  works,  O  Lord  God 
Almighty !  who  art,  and  wast,  and  art  to  come.' 

There  is  yet  another  sense,  in  which  we  must  con- 
fess that  God  'besets  us  behind  and  before.'  His 
physical  agency  in  all  places  is  a  great  and  solemn 
certainty ;  his  ceaseless  energy  through  all  time  pre- 
sents us  with  sublimer  thoughts  ;  but  there  is  a  moral 
presence  of  his  Spirit  to  our  minds  which  places  us 
in  relations  to  him  more  intimate  and  sacred.  Surely 
there  occur  to  every  uncorrupted  heart  some  stirrings 
of  a  diviner  life  ;  some  consciousness,  obscure  and 
transient  it  may  be,  but  deep  and  authoritative,  of  a 
nobler  calling  than  we  have  yet  obeyed ;  a  rooted 
dissatisfaction  with  self,  a  suspicion  of  some  poison 
in  the  will,  a  helpless  veneration  for  somewhat  that  is 
gazed  at  with  a  sign"  as  out  of  reach.  Jt  is  the  touch 
of  God  upon  us ;  his  heavy  hand  laid  upon  our  con- 
science, and  felt  by  all  who  are  not  numb  with  the 
paralytic  twist  of  sin.  Even  the  languid  mind  of 
self-indulgence,  drowsy  with  too  much  sense,  corn- 


46  THE    BESETTING    GOD. 

placent  with  too  much  self,  scarcely  escapes  the 
sacred  warning.  For  though  it  is  quite  possible  that 
such  a  one  may  have  no  compunctions  in  the  retro- 
spect which  he  takes  from  the  observatory  not  of 
conscience  but  of  comfort,  though  he  may  even  have 
lapsed  from  all  knowledge  of  remorse,  so  that  God 
has  ceased  to  'beset  him  from  behind;1  yet  the 
future  is  not  securely  shut  against  contingencies ; 
and  a  moment  of  alarm,  a  shock  of  death,  a  night  of 
misery,  may  burst  the  guilty  slumber,  and  wake  the 
poor  mortal,  as  on  a  morning  breaking  in  tempest, 
with  the  flash  of  conviction,  Behold  !  'tis  God !  To 
most,  I  believe,  there  comes  at  least  the  casual  mis- 
giving, that  there  is  a  destiny  to  which  no  justice  of 
the  heart  has  yet  been  done ;  and  to  each,  there  is 
the  anticipated  crumbling  away  of  all  his  solid 
ground  in  death ;  which  even  to  the  sternest  unbelief 
is  a  lapsing  into  the  dark  grasp  of  an  annihilating 
God.  So  that  the  Almighty  Spirit  besets  even  these 
most  lonely  of  his  children  '•from  before?  And  as 
for  minds  that  are  awake  and  in  anywise  in  quest 
of  him,  he  haunts  them  every  way.  O !  that  we 
could  but  know  it  to  be  quite  false  that  the  good 
man  is  satisfied  from  himself.  When  was  there  ever 
one  of  us  who  did  not  feel  his  recollections  full  of 
shame  and  grief,  and  find  in  the  past  the  cup  that 
overflowed  with  tears  ?  When  one  that  did  not  look 
into  the  future  with  resolves  made  timid  and  anxious 
by  the  failures  of  experience,  and  distrust  that  breaks 
the  high  young  courage  of  the*  heart,  and  prayers 
that  in  utterance  half  expect  refusal  ?  Which  of  us 
can  stand  this  day  at  the  solemn  meeting  point  of 
past  and  future,  without  abasement  for  the  one,  and 
trembling  for  the  other?  —  without  being  beset  by 


THE    BESETTIN3    GOB.  47 

the  divine  Spirit  in  penitent  regrets  from  behind,  and 
in  passionate  aspirations  from  before  ?  And  herein  we 
should  discover  only  this  ;  that  he  has  laid  his  hand 
upon  us ;  has  resolved  to  claim  us  to  the  uttermost ; 
and  will  haunt  us  with  his  rebukes,  though  they 
wither  us  with  sorrow,  till  we  surrender  without 
terms. 

It  is  not  apparently  the  design  of  heaven  that  we 
should  be  permitted  to  seek  rest  and  to  desire  ease 
in  this  aspiring  state ;  and  it  is  the  vain  attempt  to 
make  compromise  between  duty  and  indulgence,  that 
creates  the  corrosions  of  conscience,  and  the  perpetual 
disquietudes  of  spirit,  and  disappoints  our  own  ideal 
from  day  to  day,  and  from  year  to  year.  There  is 
no  way  to  the  peace  of  God  but  by  absolute  self- 
abandonment  to  his  will  that  whispers  within  us, 
without  reservation  of  happiness  or  self.  Then,  the 
relinquishment  once  made,  —  giving  ourselves  up  to 
any  high  faith  within  the  heart,  —  the  sorrows  of 
mortality,  its  reproaches,  its  fears,  will  soon  vanish, 
and  even  death  be  robbed  of  its  terrors ;  for,  to  quote 
the  noble  words  of  Lord  Bacon,  {  He  that  dies  in  an 
earnest  pursuit  is  like  one  that  is  wounded  in  hot 
blood,  who  for  the  time  scarce  feels  the  hurt;  and 
therefore  a  mind  fixed  and  bent  upon  somewhat  that 
is  good,  doth  best  avert  the  dolors  of  death.' 


III. 

GREAT   PRINCIPLES   AND    SMALL   DUTIES. 
JOHN  xin.  14. 

IF   I   THEN,   YOUR   LORD   AND   MASTER,    HAVE  WASHED   YOUR   FEET,  YE 
OUGHT   ALSO    TO   "WASH   ONE  ANOTHER'S  FEET. 

EVERY  fiction  that  has  ever  laid  strong  hold  on 
human  belief,  is  the  mistaken  image  of  some  great 
truth;  to  which  reason  will  direct  its  search,  while 
half-reason  is  content  with  laughing  at  the  super- 
stition, and  unreason  with  believing  it.  Thus,  the 
doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  faithfully  represents  the 
impression  produced  by  the  ministry  and  character  of 
Christ.  It  is  the  dark  shadow  thrown  across  the  ages 
of  Christendom  by  his  mortal  life,  as  it  inevitably 
sinks  into  the  distance.  It  is  but  the  too  literal  de- 
scription of  the  real  elements  of  his  history ;  a  mis- 
take of  the  morally,  for  the  physically  divine;  a 
reference  to  celestial  descent  of  that  majesty  of  sou], 
which,  even  in  the  eclipse  of  grief,  seemed  too  great 
for  any  meaner  origin.  Indeed  how  better  could  we 
speak  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  than  in  the  language  of 
this  doctrine ;  as  the  submission  of  a  most  heavenly 
spirit  to  the  severest  burthen  of  the  flesh, — the  volun- 
tary immersion  within  the  shades  of  deep  suffering 
of  a  godlike  mind,  visibly  radiant  with  light  unknown 
to  others,  and  betraying  its  relation  to  eternity,  while 
making  the  weary  pilgrimage  of  time?  It  was  the 
peculiarity  of  his  greatness  that  it  —  stooped,  I  will 


CHEAT  PRINCIPLES  AND  SMALL  DUTIES.       49 

not  say,  but — penetrated  without  stooping,  to  the 
humblest  wants;  not  simply  stepped  casually  aside 
to  look  at  the  most  ignominious  sorrows,  but  went 
directly  to  them,  and  lived  wholly  in  them;  scattered 
glorious  miracles  and  sacred  truths  along  the  hidden 
by-paths  and  in  the  mean  recesses  of  existence ; 
serving  the  mendicant  and  the  widow,  blessing  the 
child,  healing  the  leprosy  of  body  and  of  soul,  and 
kneeling  to  wash  even  the  traitor's  feet.  In  himself 
was  the  serene  and  unapproachable  dignity  of  a 
higher  nature,  a  mind  at  one  with  the  universe  and 
its  Author ;  in  his  acts,  a  frugal  respect  to  the  most 
neglected  elements  of  human  life,  declaring  that  he 
came  not  to  be  ministered  unto  but  to  minister. 
What  wonder  that,  when  he  had  been  ensphered  in 
the  immortal  world,  he  appeared  to  the  affectionate 
memories  of  men  as  a  divine  being  who  had  disrobed 
himself  of  rightful  glory  to  take  pity  on  their  sor- 
rows, and  put  on  for  the  gladness  of  praise  the 
garment  of  heaviness?  The  conception  is  at  least 
in  close  kindred  with  a  noble  truth;  —  that  a  soul 
occupied  with  great  ideas  best  performs  small  duties ; 
that  the  divinest  views  of  life  penetrate  most  clearly 
into  the  meanest  emergencies ;  that  so  far  from  petty 
principles  being  best  proportioned  to  petty  trials,  a 
heavenly  spirit  taking  up  its  abode  with  us  can  alone 
sustain  well  the  daily  toils,  and  tranquilly  pass  the 
humiliations,  of  our  condition  ;  and  that,  to  keep  the 
house  of  the  soul  in  due  order  and  pure,  a  god  must 
come  down  and  dwell  within,  as  servant  of  all  its 
work. 

Even  in  intellectual  culture  this  principle  receives 
illustration;    and   it  will   be   found   that  the  ripest 
knowledge   is   best    qualified   to   instruct  the   most 
5 


50  GREAT    PRINCIPLES    AND    SMALL    DUTIES. 

complete  ignorance.  It  is  a  common  mistake  to 
suppose,  that  those  who  know  little  suffice  to  inform 
those  who  know  less  ;  that  the  master  who  is  but  a 
stage  before  the  pupil  can,  as  well  as  another,  show 
him  the  way ;  nay,  that  there  may  even  be  an  advan- 
tage in  this  near  approach  between  the  minds  of 
teacher  and  of  taught ;  since  the  recollection  of  recent 
difficulties,  and  the  vividness  of  fresh  acquisition,  give 
to  the  one  a  more  living  interest  in  the  progress  of 
the  other.  Of  all  educational  errors,  this  is  one  of 
the  gravest.  The  approximation  required  between 
the  mind  of  teacher  and  of  taught  is  not  that  of  a 
common  ignorance,  but  of  mutual  sympathy ;  not  a 
partnership  in  narrowness  of  understanding,  but  that 
thorough  insight  of  the  one  into  the  other,  that 
orderly  analysis  of  the  tangled  skein  of  thought, 
that  patient  and  masterly  skill  in  developing  concep- 
tion after  conception  with  a  constant  view  to  a 
remote  result,  which  can  only  belong  to  comprehen- 
sive knowledge  and  prompt  affections.  With  what- 
ever accuracy  the  recently  initiated  may  give  out 
his  new  stores,  he  will  rigidly  follow  the  precise 
method  by  which  he  made  them  his  own  ;  and  will 
want  that  variety  and  fertility  of  resource,  that 
command  of  the  several  paths  of  access  to  a  truth, 
which  are  given  by  a  thorough  survey  of  the  whole 
field  on  which  he  stands.  The  instructor  needs  to 
have  a  full  perception,  not  merely  of  the  internal 
contents,  but  also  the  external  relations,  of  that 
which  he  unfolds ;  as  the  astronomer  knows  but 
little,  if,  ignorant  of  the  place  and  laws  of  the  moon 
and  sun,  he  has  examined  only  their  mountains  and 
their  spots.  The  sense  of  proportion  between  the 
different  parts  and  stages  of  a  subject,  the  appreci- 


GSEAT    PRINCIPLES    AND    SMALL    DUTIES.  51 

ation  of  the  size  and  value  of  every  step,  the  fore- 
sight of  the  direction  and  magnitude  of  the  section 
that  remains,  are  qualities  so  essential  to  the  teacher, 
that  without  them  all  instruction  is  but  an  insult  to 
the  learner's  understanding.  And  in  virtue  of  these 
it  is,  that  the  most  cultivated  minds  are  usually  the 
most  patient,  most  clear,  most  rationally  progressive ; 
most  studious  of  accuracy  in  details,  because  not 
impatiently  shut  up  within  them  as  absolutely  limit- 
ing the  view,  but  quietly  contemplating  them  from 
without  in  their  relation  to  the  whole.  Neglect  and 
depreciation  of  intellectual  minutiae  are  characteris- 
tics of  the  ill-informed ;  and  where  the  granular  parts 
of  study  are  thrown  away  or  loosely  held,  will  be 
found  no  compact  mass  of  knowledge  solid  and  clear 
as  crystal,  but  a  sandy  accumulation,  bound  together 
by  no  cohesion  and  transmitting  no  light.  And 
above  and  beyond  all  the  advantages  which  a  higher 
culture  gives  in  the  mere  system  of  communicating 
knowledge,  must  be  placed  that  indefinable  and 
mysterious  power  which  a  superior  mind  always  puts 
forth  upon  an  inferior;  —  that  living  and  life-giving 
action,  by  which  the  mental  forces  are  strengthened 
and  developed,  and  a  spirit  of  intelligence  is  pro- 
duced, far  transcending  in  excellence  the  acquisition 
of  any  special  ideas.  In  the  task  of  instruction,  so 
lightly  assumed,  so  unworthily  esteemed,  no  amount 
of  wisdom  would  be  superfluous  and  lost ;  and  even 
the  child's  elementary  teaching  would  be  best  con- 
ducted, were  it  possible,  by  Omniscience  itself.  The 
more  comprehensive  the  range  of  intellectual  view, 
and  the  more  minute  the  perception  of  its  parts,  the 
greater  will  be  the  simplicity  of  conception,  the  apti- 
tude for  exposition,  and  the  directness  of  access  to 


52  GREAT    PRINCIPLES    AND    SMALL    DUTIES. 

the  open  and  expectant  mind.  This  adaptation  to 
the  humblest  wants  is  the  peculiar  triumph  of  the 
highest  spirit  of  knowledge. 

In  the  same  way  it  is  observable,  that  the  trivial 
services  of  social  life  are  best  performed,  and  the 
lesser  particles  of  domestic  happiness  are  most  skil- 
fully organized,  by  the  deepest  and  the  fairest  heart. 
It  is  an  error  to  suppose  that  homely  minds  are  the 
best  administrators  of  small  duties.  Who  does  not 
know  how  wretched  a  contradiction  such  a  rule 
receives  in  the  moral  economy  of  many  a  home?  — 
how  often  the  daily  troubles,  the  swarm  of  blessed 
cares,  the  innumerable  minutiae  of  arrangement  in 
a  family,  prove  quite  too  much  for  the  generalship 
of  feeble  minds,  and  even  the  clever  selfishness  of 
strong  ones ;  how  a  petty  and  scrupulous  anxiety, 
in  defending  with  infinite  perseverance,  some  small 
and  almost  invisible  point  of  frugality  and  comfort, 
surrenders  the  greater  unobserved,  and  while  saving 
money  ruins  minds ;  how,  on  the  other  hand,  a 
rough  and  unmellowed  sagacity  rules  indeed  and 
without  defeat,  but  while  maintaining  in  action  the 
mechanism  of  government,  creates  a  constant  and 
intolerable  friction,  a  grating  together  of  reluctant 
wills,  a  groaning  under  the  consciousness  of  force, 
that  make  the  movements  of  life  fret  and  chafe  in- 
cessantly? But  where,  hi  the  presiding  genius  of 
a  home,  taste  and  sympathy  unite  (and  in  their 
genuine  forms  they  cannot  be  separated) — the  in- 
telligent feeling  for  moral  beauty  and  the  deep  heart 
of  domestic  love,  —  with  what  ease,  what  mastery, 
what  graceful  disposition,  do  the  seeming  trivialities 
of  existence  fall  into  order,  and  drop  a  blessing  as 
they  take  their  place !  how  do  the  hours  steal  away, 


GREAT    PRINCIPLES    AND    SMALL    DUTIES.  53 

unnoticed  but  by  the  precious  fruits  they  leave  !  and 
by  the   self-renunciations  of  affection,  there  comes  a 
spontaneous  adjustment  of  various  wills  ;  and  not  an 
innocent  pleasure  is  lost,  nor  a  pure  taste  offended, 
nor  a  peculiar  temper  unconsidered  ;  and  every  day 
has  its    silent   achievements  of  wisdom,  and  every 
night  its  retrospect  of  piety  and  love  ;  and  the  tran- 
quil thoughts  that,  in  the  evening  meditation,  come 
down  with  the  starlight,  seem  like  the  serenade  of 
angels,   bringing    in    melody    the    peace    of    God ! 
Wherever  this  picture  is  realized,  it  is  not  by  mi- 
croscopic solicitude   of  spirit,  but  by  comprehension 
of  mind,  and  enlargement  of  heart ;  by  that  breadth 
and  nicety  of  moral  view  which  discerns  everything 
in  due  proportion,  and  in  avoiding  an  intense  elabo- 
ration of  trifles,  has  energy  to  spare  for  what  is  great; 
in  short,  by  a  perception  akin  to  that  of  God,  whose 
providing  frugality  is  on  an  infinite  scale,  vigilant 
alike  in  heaven   and  on  earth ;  whose  art  colors  a 
universe  with  beauty,  and  touches  with  its  pencil  the 
petals  of  a  flower.     A  soul  thus  pure  and  large  dis- 
owns the  paltry  rules  of  dignity,  the  silly  notions 
of  great  and  mean,  by  which  fashion   distorts   God's 
real  proportions  ;  is   utterly  delivered  from  the  spirit 
of  contempt ;  and  in  consulting  for  the  benign  ad- 
ministration   of  life,   will   learn    many  a   task,   and 
discharge  many  an  office,  from  which  lesser  beings, 
esteeming  themselves  greater,  would  shrink  as  igno- 
ble.    But  in  truth,  nothing  is  degrading  which  a  high 
and  graceful  purpose  ennobles ;  and  offices  the  most 
menial   cease   to   be  menial,  the  moment  they  are 
wrought  in  love.     What  thousand  services  are  ren- 
dered, aye,  and  by  delicate  hands,  around  the  bed  of 
sickness,   which,   else   considered   mean,  become  at 
6» 


54  GREAT    PRINCIPLES   AND    SMALL    DUTIES. 

once  holy  and  quite  inalienable  rights.  To  smooth 
the  pillow,  to  proffer  the  draught,  to  soothe  or  to 
obey  the  fancies  of  the  delirious  will,  to  sit  for  hours 
as  the  mere  sentinel  of  the  feverish  sleep; — these 
things  are  suddenly  erected,  by  their  relation  to  hope 
and  life,  into  sacred  privileges.  And  experience  is 
perpetually  bringing  occasions,  similar  in  kind  though 
of  less  persuasive  poignancy,  when  a  true  eye  and  a 
lovely  heart  will  quickly  see  the  relations  of  things 
thrown  into  a  new  position,  and  calling  for  a  sacri- 
fice of  conventional  order  to  the  higher  laws  of  the 
affections ;  and  alike  without  condescension  and 
without  ostentation,  will  noiselessly  take  the  post 
of  gentle  service  and  do  the  kindly  deed.  Thus  is 
it  that  the  lesser  graces  display  themselves  most 
richly,  like  the  leaves  and  flowers  of  life,  where  there 
is  the  deepest  and  the  widest  root  of  love ;  not  like 
the  staring  and  artificial  blossoms  of  dry  customs 
that,  winter  or  summer,  cannot  change ;  but  living 
petals,  woven  in  nature's  work-shop  and  folded  by 
her  tender  skill,  opening  and  shutting  morning  and 
night,  glancing  and  trembling  in  the  sunshine  and 
the  breeze.  This  easy  capacity  of  great  affections 
for  small  duties  is  the  peculiar  triumph  of  the  high- 
est spirit  of  love. 

The  same  application  of  the  loftiest  principles  to 
the  most  minute  details  is  still  more  perceptible 
when  we  rise  a  step  higher,  and  from  the  operations 
of  knowledge  and  of  love,  turn  to  notice  the  agency 
of  high  religious  faith.  In  the  management  and 
conquest  of  the  daily  disappointments  and  small 
vexations  which  befall  every  life,  —  the  life  of  the  idle 
and  luxurious  no  less  than  of  the  busy  and  struggling, 
—  only  a  devout  mind  attains  to  any  real  success,  and 


GEEAT    PRINCIPLES   AUD   SMALL   DUTIES.  55 

evinces  a  triumphant  power.  Who  has  not  observed, 
how  wonderfully  the  mere  insect  cares,  that  are  ever 
on  the  wing  in  the  noon-day  heat  of  life,  have  power 
to  sting  and  to  annoy  even  the  giant  minds  around 
which  they  sport,  and  to  provoke  them  into  the  most 
unseemly  war?  The  finest  sense,  the  profoundest 
knowledge,  the  most  unquestionable  taste,  often 
prove  an  unequal  match  for  insignificant  irritations ; 
and  a  man  whose  philosophy  subdues  nature,  and 
whose  force  of  thought  and  purpose  gives  him  ascen- 
dency over  men,  may  keep,  in  his  own  temper,  an 
unvanquished  enemy  at  home.  Nor  is  this  found 
only  in  cases  of  great  self-ignorance,  or  impaired 
vigor  in  the  moral  sense.  Even  where  the  evil  is 
self-confessed  and  felt  as  a  perpetual  shame,  where 
the  conscience  sets  up  against  it  an  honest  and  firm 
resistance,  it  is  quite  possible  that  very  little  progress 
may  be  made,  and  very  little  quietness  attained. 
This  is  one  of  the  many  forms  of  Duty  which  mere 
moral  conviction,  however  clear  and  strong,  will  fail 
to  realize.  You  may  be  persuaded  that  it  is  wrong 
to  be  provoked ;  you  may  repeat  to  yourself  that  it 
is  useless;  you  may  command  your  lips  to  silence, 
and  breathe  no  angry  word ;  yet  withal  the  pertur- 
bation is  not  gone,  but  only  dumb ;  the  conquest 
is  not  made,  but  the  defeat  concealed.  There  is 
nothing  in  the  efforts  of  volition  that  has  power  to 
change  the  point  of  mental  view  ;  these  self-strivings 
do  not  lift  you  out  of  the  level  of  your  trial;  you 
remain  imprisoned  in  the  midst  of  it,  wrestle  with 
its  miseries  as  you  may,  —  wanting  the  uplifting 
faith  by  which  you  escape  from  it,  and  look  down 
upon  it.  It  may  be  very  absurd,  nay  very  immoral, 
to  be  teazed  by  trifles ;  but  alas !  while  you  remain 


56  GREAT    PRINCIPLES    AND    SMALL    DUTIES. 

in  the  dust,  reason  as  you  may,  it  will  annoy 
you:  and  there  is  no  help  for  it,  but  to  retire  into 
a  higher  and  grassier  region,  where  the  sultry  road  is 
visible  from  afar.  We  must  go  in  contemplation  out 
of  life,  ere  we  can  see  how  its  troubles  subside,  and 
are  lost,  like  evanescent  waves,  in  the  deeps  of  eter- 
nity and  the  immensity  of  God.  A  mind  that  can 
make  this  migration  from  the  scene  by  which  it  is 
surrounded,  is  removed  from  all  vain  strife  of  will, 
and  gains  its  tranquillity  without  an  effort :  feels  no 
difficulty  in  being  gentle  and  serene,  but  rather 
wonders  that  it  could  ever  be  tempted  from  its  pure 
repose.  How  welcome  would  it  often  be  to  many 
a  child  of  anxiety  and  toil,  to  be  suddenly  transferred 
from  the  heat  and  din  of  the  city,  the  restlessness  and 
worry  of  the  mart,  to  the  midnight  garden  or  the 
mountain  top !  And  like  refreshment  does  a  high 
faith,  with  its"  infinite  prospects  ever  open  to  the 
heart,  afford  to  the  worn  and  weary:  no  laborious 
travels  are  needed  for  the  devout  mind  ;  for  it  carries 
within  it  Alpine  heights  and  starlit  skies,  which  it 
may  reach  at  a  moment's  thought,  and  feel  at  once  the 
loneliness  of  nature,  and  the  magnificence  of  God. 

Nor  is  it  only  in  the  government  of  ourselves  that 
high  faith  is  found  the  most  efficient  aid  for  the  less 
dignified  duties.  In  the  services  which  benevolence 
must  render  to  others,  the  same  truth  is  exemplified ; 
and  the  humblest  and  homeliest  form  of  benevolence, 
attention  to  the  grievances  and  sufferings  of  the 
body,  receives  its  most  powerful  motive  from  the 
sublimest  of  all  truths,  the  doctrine  of  human  im- 
mortality. A  different  result  might  perhaps  have 
been  anticipated.  It  might  have  been  thought,  that 
for  the  truest  sympathy  with  the  pains  of  disease  ancj 


GREAT  PRINCIPLES  AND  SMALL  DUTIES.      57 

the  privations  of  infirmity,  we  must  look  to  the 
disciples  of  materialism  and  annihilation ;  that  they 
who  take  the  body  to  be  our  all,  would  most  vehe- 
mently deplore  its  fragility,  and  most  affectionately 
tend  its  decline  ;  that  no  love  would  be  so  faithful  as 
that  which  believed,  at  the  death-bed  of  a  friend,  that 
the  real  last  look,  the  absolute  farewell,  was  drawing 
nigh.  On  the  theory  of  extinction,  O  with  what 
close  embrace  would  it  seem  natural  to  cling  to  each 
sinking  life, —  like  kindred  in  shipwreck  that  cannot 
part !  The  vivid  expectation  of  futurity,  which  has 
so  often  led  the  believer  to  ascetic  contempt  for  his 
own  physical  wants,  would  appear  only  consistent,  if 
it  passed  by  in  equal  scorn  the  bodily  miseries  of 
others.  But  it  has  not  been  so.  In  this,  as  in  all 
the  other  instances,  it  appears,  that  the  sublimest 
instruments  of  the  mind  are  the  best  fitted  to  the 
most  homely  offices  of  duty;  and  that  truths  the 
most  divine  are  the  gentlest  servitors  of  wants  the 
most  humiliating.  In  the  eye  of  one  who  looks  on 
his  fellow-man  as  a  compound  being,  the  immortal 
element  imparts,  not  meanness,  but  a  species  of 
sanctity,  to  the  mortal;  just  as  the  worshipper  feels 
that  of  the  temple  whose  space  has  been  set  apart 
for  God,  the  very  stones  are  sacred,  and  the  pave- 
ment claims  a  venerating  tread.  It  is  this  constant 
penetration  to  the  mind  within,  this  recognition  of 
something  that  is  not  seen,  that  overcomes  the  phys- 
ical repulsiveness  of  corporeal  want  and  pain,  and 
gives  a  tranquil  patience  to  the  Christian  who 
watches  the  ravages  of  disease  and  the  approach  of 
death.  Nay,  when  he  sees  the  soul  which  is  the  heir 
of  heaven  prostrated  and  tortured  by  a  wretched 
frame,  he  thinks  it  almost  an  indignity  that  so  kingly 


59  GREAT    PRINCIPLES    AKD    SMALL    DUTIES. 

a  habitant  should  pine  in  so  poor  a  cell,  and  a  native 
of  the  light  itself  cry  thus  aloud  in  dark  captivity  ; 
and  with  touched  and  generous  heart,  he  flies  to  the 
sufferer,  with  such  help  and  succor  as  he  may. 

Let  us,  then,  cherish  and  revere  the  great  sentiments 
which  we  assemble  here  to  pour  forth  in  worship,  not 
as  the  occasional  solace,  or  the  weekly  dignities  of 
our  existence ;  but  as  truths  that  naturally  penetrate 
to  the  very  heart  of  life's  activity,  and  best  administer 
even  the  small  frugalities  of  conscience.  Nothing 
less  than  the  majesty  of  God,  and  the  powers  of  the 
world  to  come,  can  maintain  the  peace  and  sanctity 
of  our  homes,  the  order  and  serenity  of  our  minds, 
the  spirit  of  patience  and  tender  mercy  in  our  hearts. 
Then  only  shall  we  wisely  economize  moments  when 
we  anticipate  for  ourselves  an  eternity,  and  lose  no 
grain  of  wisdom,  when  we  discern  the  glorious  and 
immortal  structure  which  its  successive  accumula- 
tions shall  raise.  Then  will  even  the  merest  drudgery 
of  duty  cease  to  humble  us,  when  we  transfigure  it 
by  the  glory  of  our  own  spirit.  Seek  ye  then  the 
things  that  are  above,  where  your  life  is  hid  with 
Christ  in  God. 


IV. 

EDEN    AND    GETHSEMANE. 

1  COR.  XT.  46. 

AND  SO  IT  IS  WRITTEN,  THE  FIRST  MAN  ADAM  WAS  MADE  A  LIVING 
SOUL,  THE  LAST  ADAM  WAS  MADE  A  QUICKENING  SPIRIT.  HOW- 
BEIT  THAT  WAS  NOT  FIRST  WHICH  IS  SPIRITUAL,  BUT  THAT  WHICH 
IS  NATURAL  ;  AXD  AFTERWARD  THAT  WHICH  IS  SPIRITUAL. 

GREAT  and  sacred  was  the  day  of  Adam's  birth  : 
if  for  no  other  reason,  yet  for  this,  —  that  he  was  the 
first  man,  and  had  a  living  soul.  The  impressions 
received  by  the  original  human  being,  dropped  silent- 
ly at  dawn  from  infinite  night  upon  this  green  earth, 
can  never  have  been  repeated.  With  maturity  of 
powers,  yet  without  a  memory  or  a  hope  ;  with  full- 
eyed  perception,  yet  without  interpreting  experience ; 
with  all  things  new,  yet  without  wonder,  since  also 
there  was  nothing  old ;  he  was  thrown  upon  those 
primitive  instincts  by  which  God  teaches  the  un- 
taught ;  left  to  wander  over  his  abode,  and  note  the 
ever-living  attitudes  of  nature :  and  from  her  bewil- 
dering mixture  of  the  original  with  the  repeated,  from 
rest  and  weariness,  from  the  confusion  of  waking  and 
of  dreams  (both  real  alike  to  him),  from  the  glow  of 
noon  and  the  fall  of  darkness  and  the  night,  from  the 
summer  shower  and  the  winter  snow,  to  disentangle 
some  order  at  length,  and  recognize  the  elementary 
laws  of  the  spot  whereon  he  dwelt. 


60  EDEN    AND   GETHSEMANE. 

Fast  as  five  senses  and  a  receiving  mind  would 
permit,  did  he  find  where  he  was,  and  when  he  came, 
and  by  what  sort  of  scene  he  was  environed;  how 
the  fair  show  of  creation  came  round,  each  part  in 
its  own  section  of  space  and  time,  persuading  him  to 
notice  and  obey.  And  when  he  is  thus  the  pupil 
of  the  external  world,  he  is  training  to  become  its 
Lord,  —  by  the  discipline  of  submission  learning  the 
faculty  of  rule.  Beneath  the  steady  eye  of  human 
observation,  nature  becomes  fascinated,  and  consents 
to  be  the  menial  and  the  drudge  of  man,  doing  the 
bidding  of  his  wants  and  will,  and  apprenticing  her 
illimitable  power  to  his  prescribing  skill.  And  so 
was  it  given  to  the  father  of  our  race,  for  himself, 
and  for  his  children,  to  subdue  the  earth,  —  to  put 
forth  the  invisible  force  of  his  mind  in  conquest  of 
its  palpable  energies,  —  to  give  the  savage  elements 
their  first  lesson  as  the  domestic  slaves  of  human 
life,  and  make  "some  rude  advance  towards  that 
docility  with  which  now  they  till  and  spin,  and 
weave,  and  carry  heavy  burdens,  with  the  fleetness 
of  the  winds  and  the  precision  of  the  hours.  To  a 
living  and  understanding  soul,  what  was  the  unex- 
hausted world,  but  in  itself  a  Paradise  ?  And  was 
there  aught  else  for  its  earliest  inhabitant,  but  to 
discover  what  fruits  he  might  open  his  bosom  to 
receive  from  the  universe  around?  Worthily  does 
the  Bible  open  with  the  story  of  Eden,  the  fresh 
dawn,  the  untrodden  garden,  of  our  life.  Truly,  too, 
whatever  geologists  may  find  and  say,  is  that  day 
identified  with  the  general  act  of  creation  ;  for,  in  no 
intelligible  human  sense,  was  there  any  universe,  till 
there  was  a  soul  filled  with  the  idea  thereof.  The 
system  of  things,  of  which  Moses  proposed  to  him- 


EDEN    AND    GETHSEMANE.  61 

self  to  write  the  origin,  was  not  a  Saurian  or  a 
Mammoth's  world,  not  such  a  creation  as  was  pic- 
tured in  the  perceptions  of  huge  reptiles  and  extinct 
fishes ;  but  such  universe  as  the  spirit  of  a  man  dis- 
cerns within,  and  so  spreads  without  him;  and  of 
this  it  is  certain,  that  the  instant  of  his  birth  was  the 
date  of  its  creation.  For  had  he  been  different,  it 
would  not  have  been  the  same ;  had  he  been  opposite, 
it  would  have  been  reversed ;  and  had  he  not  been  at 
all,  it  would  not  have  appeared.  Whatever  is  solemn 
in  the  apparition  of  the  fair  and  infinite  universe, 
belongs  to  the  day  of  Adam's  birth. 

Greater,  however,  and  more  sacred,  was  the  day  of 
Christ's  birth ;  of  that  '  second  man,'  as  Paul  says 
with  glorious  meaning,  of  that  '  last  Adam,'  who 
was  '  a  quickening  spirit,'  and  the  first  parent  of  a 
new  race  of  souls.  He,  too,  was  placed  by  the  hand 
of  God  upon  a  fresh  world,  and  commissioned  to 
explore  its  silent  and  trackless  ways,  —  to  watch  and 
rest  in  its  darkness,  and  use  and  bless  its  light,  —  to 
learn  by  instincts  divine  and  true,  of  its  blossoms 
and  its  fruits,  its  fountains  and  its  floods.  But  it 
was  the  world  within,  the  untrodden  forest  of  the 
soul  where  the  consciousness  of  God  hides  itself  in 
such  dim  light,  and  whispers  with  such  mystic  sound, 
as  befit  a  region  so  boundless  and  primeval,  —  it  was 
this,  on  which  Jesus  dwelt  as  the  first  inspired  inter- 
preter. To  him  it  was  given,  not  to  cast  his  eye 
around  human  life  and  observe  by  what  scene  it  was 
encompassed;  but  to  retire  into  it,  and  reveal  what  it 
contained;  not  to  disclose  how  man  is  materially 
placed,  but  what  he  spiritually  is ;  to  comprehend  and 
direct,  not  his  natural  advantages  of  skill  and  physical 
power,  but  his  grief,  his  hope,  his  strife,  his  love,  his  sin, 
6 


62  EDEN    AND    GETHSEMANE. 

his  worship.  He  was  to  find,  not  what  comfort  man 
may  open  his  bosom  to  receive,  but  what  blessing  he 
may  open  his  heart  to  give;  nay,  what  transforming 
light  may  go  forth  from  the  conscience  and  the  faith 
within,  to  make  the  common  earth  divine,  and  exhibit 
around  it  the  mountain  heights  of  God's  protection  : 
to  show  us  the  Father,  not  as  the  great  mechanic  of 
the  universe,  whose  arrangements  we  obey  that  we 
may  use  them ;  but  as  the  Holy  Spirit  that  moves  us 
with  the  sigh  of  infinite  desires,  and  the  prayer  of 
ever  conscious  guilt,  and  the  meek  hope  —  that  stays 
by  us  so  long  as  we  are  absolutely  true  —  of  help 
and  pity  from  the  Holiest.  And  if  the  affections  are 
as  the  colored  window  —  near  and  small  and  of  the 
earth —  or  far  and  vast  and  of  the  sky,  through  which 
we  receive  the  images  of  all  things,  and  find  them 
change  with  the  glass  of  our  perceptions,  how  justly 
does  the  Apostle  Paul  deem  the  work  of  Christ  '  a 
new  creation !'  If  he  that  makes  an  eye,  calls  up 
the  mighty  phantom  of  the  heavens  and  the  earth ; 
he  that  forms  a  soul  within  us.  remodels  our  universe 
and  reveals  our  God.  Eden  then  is  less  sacred  than 
the  streets  of  Bethlehem  and  the  fields  of  Nazareth  ; 
though,  as  befits  the  cradle  of  the  natural  man  who 
needs  such  things,  its  atmosphere  might  be  purer, 
and  its  slopes  more  verdant.  Indeed  in  all  their 
adjuncts  do  we  see  the  character  of  the  two  events, 
and  how  '  afterwards  alone  came  that  which  was 
spiritual.'  When  the  first  man  heard  the  voice  and 
step  of  the  Most  High,  it  was  outwardly  among  the 
trees,  as  was  natural  to  one  born  of  the  mere  physical 
and  constructing  energy  of  God,  without  a  mother 
and  without  a  home ;  when  Jesus  discerned  the  di- 
vine accents,  the  whispers  of  the  Father  were  within 


EDEN    AND    GETHSEMANE.  63 

him,  the  solemn  articulation  of  the  spirit  infinitely 
affectionate  and  wise ;  —  a  distinction  altogether  suit- 
able to  one  born  of  that  mother  who  hid  many  things 
in  her  heart,  —  granted  to  us  by  that  gentlest  form 
of  the  Divine  love,  whence  alone  great  and  noble 
natures  are  ever  nurtured.  When  Adam  entered  life, 
the  earth  was  glad  and  jubilant ;  when  Christ  was 
born,  the  joy  was  testified  by  angels,  and  the  anthem 
sounded  from  the  sky.  The  '  first  man  '  subdued 
the  physical  world  ;  the  last  man  won  the  immortal 
heaven. 

Fellow-men  and  fellow-Christians,  there  is  an  Adam 
and  a  Christ  within  us  all ; — a  natural  and  a  spiritual 
man,  whereof  the  father  of  our  race  and  the  author 
of  our  faith  are  the  respective  emblems,  both  in  the 
order  of  their  succession,  and  the  nature  of  their 
mission.  We  are  endowed  with  powers  of  sense,  of 
understanding,  of  action,  by  which  we  communicate 
with  the  scene  of  our  present  existence,  and  win  tri- 
umphs over  external  and  finite  nature ;  by  which  we 
appropriate  and  multiply  the  fruits  of  Providence 
permitted  to  our  happiness.  And  we  are  conscious, 
however  faintly,  of  aspirations  and  affections,  of  a 
faith  and  wonder,  of  a  hope  and  sadness,  which  bear 
us  beyond  the  margin  of  the  earthly  and  finite,  and 
afford  some  glimpse  of  the  infinitude  in  which  we 
live.  By  the  one  we  go  forth  and  discover  our 
knowledge,  by  the  other  return  within  and  learn  our 
ignorance ;  by  the  one  we  conquer  nature,  by  the 
other  we  serve  God ;  by  the  one  we  shut  ourselves 
up  in  life,  by  the  other  we  look  with  full  gaze  through 
death  ;  by  the  one  we  acquire  happiness,  and  sagacity, 
and  skill,  —  by  the  other  wisdom,  and  sanctity,  and 
truth  ;  by  the  one  we  look  on  our  position  and  all  that 


64  EDEX    AXB    GETHSEAIAXE. 

surrounds  it  with  the  eye  of  economy, — by  the  other, 
with  the  eye  of  love.  Our  first  and  superficial  aim 
is  to  be,  like  Adam,  lord  below;  our  last  to  be,  like 
Christ,  associate  above.  In  short,  the  individual  mind 
is  conducted  through  a  history  like  the  sacred  record 
of  the  general  race,  and,  if  it  be  just  to  its  capacities, 
passes  through  a  period  of  new  creation  ;  and  every 
noble  life,  like  the  Bible,  (which  is  'the  book  of  life,') 
begins  with  Paradise,  and  ends  with  Heaven. 

Ere  Jesus  became  the  Christ,  he  was  led  into  the 
desert  to  be  tempted.  And  before  the  Messiah  within 
us,  —  the  messenger-spirit  of  God  in  the  soul,  —  can 
make  his  inspiration  felt,  and  render  his  voice  articu- 
late and  clear,  we  too  must  have  been  called  to  severe 
and  lonely  struggles  with  the  power  of  sin.  On  no 
lighter  terms  can  the  natural  man  pass  into  the 
spiritual,  and  Deity  shape  forth  a  dwelling  within  the 
deeps  of  our  humanity.  In  childhood,  we  live  in 
God's  creation,  as  in  the  unanxious  shelter  of  some 
Eden ;  the  innocent  in  a  garden  of  fruits,  where  the 
tillage  demands  no  toil,  and  with  smallest  restraint, 
we  have  little  else  but  to  gather  and  enjoy ;  and  he 
utmost  duty  is  to  abstain,  rather  than  to  do ;  to  keep 
the  lips  from  forbidden  fruits,  not  to  spend  the  labor 
and  sorrow  of  the  brow  or  of  the  soul,  to  raise  and 
multiply  the  bread  of  nature  or  of  life.  And  many, 
alas !  there  are,  who  make  their  life  this  sort  of  holi- 
day thing  unto  the  end,  and  retain  its  childishness, — 
only,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  losing  all  its  inno- 
cence ;  strolling  through  it  as  a  mere  fruit-gathering 
place,  a  garden  of  indulgence,  a  Paradise  sacred  no 
more  because  empty  now  of  God,  and  unvisited  by 
the  murmurs  of  his  voice. 

There  comes  a  time  to  us  all,  when  the  sense  of 


EDEX    AND    OETHSEMANE.  65 

responsibility  starts  up  and  rebukes  our  anxiety  for 
ease ;  tells  us  that  we  are  living  fast,  and  once  for 
all,  a  life  that  enlarges  to  the  scale  of  eternity,  and  is 
embosomed  everywhere  in  God  ;  bids  us  spring  from 
our  collapse  of  selfishness  and  sleep,  take  up  the  full 
dimensions  of  our  strength,  and  go  forth  to  do  much, 
if  it  be  possible,  and  at  least  to  do  worthily  and  well. 
And  full  often  is  the  conflict  terrible  between  the 
indolence  of  custom,  the  passiveness  of  self-will,  and 
this  inspiring  impulse  of  the  divine  deliverer  within 
us.  Many  a  secret  passage  of  our  existence  does  it 
make  bleak  as  the  wilderness,  and  lonely  as  the 
Dead-Sea  shore;  in  many  an  hour  of  meditation, 
seemingly  the  stillest,  does  it  inwardly  tear  us,  as  in 
the  mid-strife  of  heaven  and  hell,  and  leave  us  wasted 
as  with  fasting  nigh  to  death  ;  but  oh !  if  we  are 
only  true  to  the  Spirit  that  declares  'we  shall  not 
live  by  bread  alone;'  if  we  quietly  descend  from  the 
pinnacle  of  our  pride  (though  sin  may  pretend  to 
make  it  sacred  and  call  it  a  turret  of  the  temple) ; 
if  we  keep  close  to  the  meek  appointed  ways  of  Him 
whom  our  presumption  must  not  try ;  if  we  bend  no 
knee  to  the  majesty  of  splendid  wrong,  but  in  single 
allegiance  to  the  Holiest,  drive  away  the  most  glori- 
ous spirit  of  guilt  that  honors  our  strength  with  his 
assault;  —  do  we  not  find  at  length  that  angels  corne 
and  minister  unto  us ;  that  the  waste  appears  to 
vanish  suddenly  away,  and  the  desert  to  blossom  as 
the  rose  ;  that  we  are  restored  as  to  a  garden,  not  of 
the  earth,  but  of  the  Lord,  filled  with  the  whispers  of 
divinest  peace?  And  so  our  energy  is  born  from  the 
moments  of  weakness  and  of  fear ;  and  were  there 
no  hell  to  tempt  us,  there  were  no  heaven  to  bless. 
From  the  crisis  of  trembling  and  of  doubt,  we  issue 
6* 


66  EDEX    AND    GETHSEMANE. 

forth  to  take  up  our  mission  gladly,  with  the  un- 
speakable shelter  of  God  without  us,  and  the  hidden 
life  of  his  love  within  us. 

Again :  he  who  gave  us  the  Gospel  was  '  the  Man 
of  Sorrows;'  and  the  glad  tidings  of  great  joy  were 
pronounced  by  a  voice  mellowed  by  many  a  sadness. 
And  not  otherwise  is  it  with  the  messenger-spirit  of 
our  private  hearts ;  which  does  not  become  the 
Christ,  the  consecrated  revealer  of  what  is  holy, 
unless  it  be  much  acquainted  with  grief.  Heaven 
and  God  are  best  discerned  through  tears ;  scarcely 
perhaps  discerned  at  all  without  them.  I  do  not 
mean  that  a  man  must  be  outwardly  afflicted,  and 
lose  his  comforts  or  his  friends,  before  he  can  become 
devout.  Many  a  Christian  maintains  the  truest  heart 
of  piety  without  such  dispensations ;  and  more,  alas ! 
remain  as  hard  and  cold  as  ever  in  spite  of  them. 
That  there  is  felt  to  be  a  general  tendency,  however, 
in  the  blow  of  calamity,  and  the  sense  of  loss,  to 
awaken  the  latent  thought  of  God,  and  persuade  us 
to  seek  his  refuge,  the  current  language  of  devotion 
in  every  age,  the  constant  association  of  prayer  with 
the  hour  of  bereavement  and  the  scenes  of  death, 
suffice  to  show.  Yet  is  this  effect  of  external  distress 
only  a  particular  instance  of  a  general  truth,  viz.,  that 
religion  springs  up  in  the  mind,  wherever  any  of  the 
infinite  affections  and,  desires  press  severely  against 
the  finite  conditions  of  our  existence.  In  ill-disciplined 
and  contracted  souls,  this  sorrowful  condition  is 
never  fulfilled,  except  when  some  much-loved  bless- 
ing is  forcibly  snatched  away,  and  their  human  at- 
tachment (which  is  infinite)  is  surprised  (though 
knowing  it  well  before)  at  the  violence  of  death, 
knocks  with  vain  cries  at  the  cruel  barriers  of  our 


EDEX    AXD    GETHSEAIANE.  67 

humanity,  and  is  answered  by  the  voice  of  mystery 
from  beyond. 

But  such  was  not  the  sorrow  with  which  Christ 
was  stricken ;  nor  is  such  the  only  sorrow  with  which 
good  and  faithful  minds  are  affected.  There  are 
many  immeasurable  affections  of  our  nature,  besides 
that  which  makes  our  kindred  dear:  —  the  yearning 
for  truth,  the  delight  in  beauty,  the  veneration  for 
excellence,  the  high  ambition  of  conscience  ever 
pressing  forward  yet  unable  to  attain, — these  also 
live  within  us,  and  strive  unceasingly  in  noble 
hearts ;  and  there  is  an  inner  and  a  viewless  sorrow, 
a  spontaneous  weeping  of  these  infinite  desires, 
whence  the  highest  order  of  faith  and  devotion  will 
be  found  to  spring;  so  much  so,  that  no  one  can 
even  think  of  Christ,  visibly  social  and  cheerful  as  he 
was,  without  the  belief  of  a  secret  sadness,  that 
might  be  overheard  in  his  solitary  prayers.  Those 
who  make  the  end  of  existence  to  consist  of  happi- 
ness may  try  to  conceal  so  perplexing  a  fact,  and 
may  draw  pictures  of  the  exceeding  pleasantness  of 
religion ;  but  human  nature,  trained  in  the  school  of 
Christianity,  throws  away  as  false  the  delineation  of 
piety  in  the  disguise  of  Hebe,  and  declares  that  there 
is  something  higher  far  than  happiness;  that  thought, 
which  is  ever  full  of  care  and  trouble,  is  better  far ; 
that  all  true  and  disinterested  affection,  which  often 
is  called  to  mourn,  is  better  still ;  that  the  devoted 
allegiance  of  conscience  to  duty  and  to  God, — 
which  ever  has  in  it  more  of  penitence  than  of  joy, — 
is  noblest  of  all. 

If  happiness  means  the  satisfaction  of  desire  (and 
I  can  conceive  no  other  definition),  then  there  is 
necessarily  something  greater,  viz.  religion,  which 


68  EDEN    AND    GETHSEMANE. 

implies  constant  yearning  and  aspiration,  and  there- 
fore non-satisfaction  of  desire.  In  truth  that  which 
is  deemed  the  happiest  period  of  life  must  pass  away, 
before  we  can  sink  into  the  deep  secrets  of  faith  and 
hope.  The  primitive  gladness  of  childhood  is  that 
of  a  bounded  and  limited  existence,  which  earnestly 
wishes  for  nothing  that  exceeds  the  dimensions  of 
possibility ;  —  of  a  human  Paradise,  about  whose 
enclosure-line  no  inquiry  is  made ;  and  through  sor- 
row and  the  sense  of  sin,  we  must  issue  from  those 
peaceful  gates,  and  make  pilgrimage  amid  the  thistle 
and  the  thorn,  instead  of  the  blossom  and  the  rose  ; 
and  lie  panting  on  the  dust,  instead  of  sleeping  on 
the  green  sward  of  life,  before  we  learn  through 
mortal  weakness  our  immortal  strength,  and  feel 
in  the  exile  of  the  earth  the  shelter  of  the  skies. 
Then,  however,  the  spirit  of  Christ,  the  Man  of  Sor- 
rows, gives  us  a  rebirth  of  joy  through  tears.  Be- 
fore, we  were  simply  unconscious  of  death ;  then,  we 
enter  into  the  consciousness  of  immortality.  Before, 
our  will  was  restrained  by  a  law  which  we  could  not 
keep ;  then,  it  is  emancipated  by  a  fresh  love  that 
more  than  keeps  it;  whose  free  inclination  goes  be- 
fore all  precept  and  authoritative  faith ;  and  hopeth 
all  things,  believeth  all  things,  endureth  all  things ; 
nay,  even  can  do  all  things,  through  the  Christ  who 
strengthened  it. 

Children  then  of  nature,  we  are  also  sons  of  God ; 
born  of  the  genial  earth,  we  are  to  climb  the  glorious 
heaven ;  and  to  the  human  lot  that  makes  us  of  one 
blood  with  Adam,  is  added  the  divine  liberty  of 
being  of  one  spirit  with  Christ.  That  liberty  we  can- 
not decline,  for  we  are  conscious  of  it  now;  and  if 
we  look  not  on  it  as  on  the  face  of  an  angel,  it  will 


EDEX    AND    GETHSEMANE.  69 

haunt  us  with  its  gaze  like  the  eye  of  a  fiend.  The 
severe  prerogatives  of  an  existence  half  divine  are 
ours.  To  \vear  away  life  in  unproductive  harmless- 
ness  is  innocent  no  more ;  with  the  glory  we  take  the 
cross;  and  instead  of  slumbering  at  noon  in  Eden, 
must  keep  the  midnight  watch  within  Gethsemane. 
We,  too,  like  our  great  leader,  must  be  made  perfect 
through  suffering;  but  the  struggle  by  night  will 
bring  the  calmness  of  the  morning ;  the  hour  of 
exceeding  sorrow  will  prepare  the  day  of  godlike 
strength ;  the  prayer  for  deliverance  calls  down  the 
power  of  endurance.  And  while  to  the  reluctant 
their  cross  is  too  heavy  to  be  borne,  it  grows  light 
to  the  heart  of  willing  trust.  The  faithful  heirs  of 
'  the  Man  of  Somnvs,'  transcending  the  trials  they 
cannot  decline,  may  quit  the  world  with  the  cry  '  it 
is  finished,'  and  pass  through  the  silence  of  death  to 
the  peace  of  God. 


V. 

SORROW    NO    SIN. 
LUKE  Sxm.  28. 

BUT  JESUS,  TURNING  UNTO  THEM,  SAID,  DAUGHTERS  OF  JERUSALEM, 
WEEP  NOT  FOR  ME,  BUT  WEEP  FOR  YOURSELVES  AND  FOR  TOUR 
CHILDREN. 

CHRIST,  then,  could  invite  to  tears;  to  tears  over 
departing  excellence ;  to  tears  which  men  idly  call 
selfish  ;  tears  '  for  themselves  and  for  their  children.' 
He  whose  mission  it  was  to  teach  the  Paternity  of 
Providence,  and  the  serenity  of  the  immortal  hope, — 
he  who  himself  lived  in  the  divinest  peace  which 
they  can  give,  thought  it  no  treason  to  these  truths 
to  weep.  To  the  eye  of  the  Man  of  Sorrows,  sor- 
row was  no  sin ;  nor  did  he,  who  was  emphatically 
the  Son  of  God,  see,  in  even  the  passionate  utterance 
of  grief,  any  of  that  spirit  of  filial  distrust  towards 
God  and  reluctant  acceptance  of  his  will,  which 
have  often  been  charged  on  it  by  the  hard  and  cold 
temper  of  his  followers.  Religious  professors  have 
put  their  own  congenial  interpretation  on  the  morality 
of  Christ;  and  being  themselves  —  but  too  frequently 
— unfeeling  and  unsocial  mystics,  they  have  multi- 
plied the  penances  of  natural  emotion,  and  sublimed 
from  the  Gospel  its  pure  humanities.  If  we  accept 
their  representations,  our  religion  aims  to  cancel  our 
natural  affections,  and  substitute  others  at  variance 
with  them ;  the  impulses  of  gladness  and  grief  are 


SOEEOAV    KO    SIN.  71 

alike  to  be  condemned  as  a  rebel  love  of  perishable 
things  ;  the  most  agitating  passages  of  our  being, 
which  convulse  us  to  the  centre,  are  to  be  met  with 
a  rigid  and  tearless  piety;  the  future,  though  invisible 
and  intangible,  though  approachable  only  by  kindled 
imagination,  is  to  be  acknowledged  as  the  only 
region  of  the  fair  and  good,  and  to  supersede  all 
other  claims  upon  our  desire  and  regard.  The  pres- 
ent, though  the  intensest  point  of  existence,  is  to  be 
comparatively  unfelt ;  and  the  past,  whereof  the 
retrospect  is  sweet  and  solemn  to  the  travelled  pil- 
grim,—  the  history  of  childhood  and  its  unforgotten 
friendships,  of  youth  and  its  unchecked  aspirations, 
of  maturity  with  its  worn  yet  deeper  love,  its  more 
crushing  yet  worthier  anxieties,  its  purer  but  more 
melancholy  wisdom,  —  all  this,  because  it  is  human 
and  not  divine,  of  earth  and  not  of  heaven,  is  to  be 
refused  the  tribute  of  a  sigh. 

For  my  own  part,  regarding  our  human  nature  as 
the  image  of  its  divine  parent,  and  in  nothing  more 
truly  that  image  than  in  the  impulses  of  its  disinter- 
ested love,  I  bend  in  reverence  before  the  emotions 
of  every  melted  heart;  believing  this  present  life  to 
be  the  worthy  childhood  of  futurity,  conceiving  its 
interests,  its  happiness,  to  be  substantially  the  same, 
but  framed  upon  a  smaller  scale,  and  clouded  with  a 
deeper  shade,  I  see  in  its  history  nothing  trivial,  in 
its  events  nothing  contemptible,  in  its  vicissitudes 
nothing  unworthy  of  a  man's  profoundest  thought. 
And  taking  the  Gospel  to  afford  a  promise  not  of 
the  extinction  of  human  nature  in  heaven,  but  of  its 
perpetuity, —  an  assurance  not  that  we  shall  be  con- 
verted into  chill  and  pious  phantoms,  but  simply 
elevated  into  immortal  men, —  I  would  gather  from 


72  SORROAV    NO    SIX. 

that  hope  a  deeper  veneration  for  all  the  pure  tastes 
and  natural  feelings  of  a  good  mind  :  I  would  main- 
tain the  sanctity  of  human  joy  and  human  grief: 
I  would  protest  against  all  stern  censure  on  the 
outbreaks  of  true  sorrow ;  and  would  plead  that 
to  mourn,  —  aye,  and  with  broken  spirit,  —  the  de- 
parture of  virtue  and  of  love,  is  —  not  a  resistance 
to  a  Father's  will,  not  an  oblivion  of  his  Providence, 
not  the  expression  of  an  ignoble  selfishness,  not  a 
mistrust  of  a  restoring  heaven ;  but  only  a  fitting 
homage  to  God's  most  benignant  gifts,  the  grateful 
glance  of  a  loving  eye  on  blessings,  than  which 
nothing  more  holy,  more  peaceful,  more  exalting,  is 
conferred  by  a  guardian  benevolence  on  man. 

Those  who  blame  as  unchristian  the  deep  grief 
which  bereavement  awakens,  must  extend  their  dis- 
approbation much  further,  and  censure  all  strong 
human  attachments.  Sorrow  is  not  an  independent 
state  of  mind,  standing  unconnected  with  all  others. 
It  could  not  be  cancelled  singly,  leaving  all  other 
qualities  of  our  nature  in  their  integrity.  It  is  the 
effect,  and  under  the  present  conditions  of  our  being 
the  inevitable  effect,  of  strong  affections.  Nay,  it 
is  not  so  much  their  result,  as  a  certain  attitude  of 
those  affections  themselves.  It  not  simply  flows 
from  the  love  of  excellence,  of  wisdom,  of  sympa- 
thy, but  it  is  that  very  love,  when  conscious  that 
excellence,  that  wisdom,  that  sympathy,  have  de- 
parted. The  more  intense  the  delight  in  their 
presence,  the  more  poignant  must  be  the  impression 
of  their  absence :  and  you.  cannot  destroy  the  an- 
guish, unless  you  forbid  the  joy.  Grief  is  only  the 
memory  of  widowed  affection;  and  nothing  but  a 
draft  of  utter  oblivion  could  lap  it  in  insensibility. 


SORROW  :NO  SIN.  73 

When  the  ties  of  strong  and  refined  attachment  have 
long  bound  us  to  a  home  ;  when  the  sympathies  of 
those  who  share  with  us  that  home  have  become  as 
the  needful  light  to  our  daily  toil,  and  the  guardian 
spirits  of  our  nightly  rest ;  when  years  have  passed 
on,  and  brought  us  many  a  sickness  banished  by  their 
fidelity,  many  a  danger  averted  by  their  counsels, 
many  an  anxiety  rendered  tolerable  by  their  partici- 
pation ;  when  often  they  too  have  gazed  on  us  from 
the  bed  of  pain,  and  threatened  to  depart,  but  we 
have  been  permitted  to  rescue  them  from  the  grave, 
and  therein  have  doubled  all  our  tenderness ;  when 
from  this  close  inspection  of  pure  hearts,  we  have 
learned  to  think  nobly  of  human  nature,  and  hope- 
fully of  the  Providence  of  God ;  when  their  voices, 
common  enough  to  other  ears,  but  fraught  to  us  with 
unnumbered  memories  of  life,  have  become  the  nat- 
ural music  of  the  earth  ;  —  can  this  melody  be  silent, 
can  these  virtues  depart,  can  these  remembrances 
be  deprived  of  their  living  centre,  without  leaving  us 
trembling  and  desolate  ?  Can  all  these  fibres  of  our  life 
be  thus  wrenched,  and  not  bleed  at  every  pore?  And 
to  forget, — it  cannot  be.  We  daily  pass  through 
places  which  are  the  shrine  of  a  thousand  recollec- 
tions ;  we  are  startled  by  tones  which  pour  on  us  a 
flood  of  conviction;  we  open  a  book,  and  there  is 
the  very  name ;  we  write  a  date,  and  it  is  an  anni- 
versary. These  associations  with  the  past,  —  I  do 
not  say  excite  sorrow,  but  to  an  affectionate  mind 
are  sorrow.  The  morality  then  which  rebukes  sor- 
row, rebukes  love.  It  is  useless  expatiating  on  the 
evils  which  strong  grief  inflicts  on  ourselves  and 
others  :  you  are  bound  to  show  that  the  affections, 
of  which  it  is  an  inseparable  form,  contain  no  coun- 
7 


74  SORROW    XO    SIN. 

teracting  good  ;  that  it  is  more  blessed,  more  holy, 
to  freeze  up  the  springs  of  emotion,  than  to  suffer 
them  perennially  to  fertilize  our  natnre,  though  they 
sometimes  deluge  it ;  that  it  is  better  to  keep  loose 
from  all  that  is  human,  and  love  nothing  that  we 
may  lose.  You  cannot  sever  them  :  grief  and  love 
must  stay  or  go  together.  And  who  can  doubt  that 
that  is  the  truest  duty  to  God  which  permits  to  us 
the  most  disinterested  heart  for  each  other ;  that  the 
purest  devotion  which  sanctifies,  and  not  chills  our 
affections ;  that  the  most  genuine  trust,  which  dares 
to  cultivate  to  the  utmost  sympathies  wounded  here, 
and  serenely  blest  only  hereafter ;  that  the  most  filial 
hope  which  regarded  the  brotherhood  of  man  as  an 
inference  from  the  paternity  of  God,  looks  to  heaven 
as  to  another  home. 

There  are  doubtless  cases  not  infrequent,  in  which 
the  mind  is  unduly  overpowered  by  affliction ;  in 
which  the  tranquillity  of  the  reason  is  wholly  overset, 
and  the  energy  of  the  will  utterly  prostrated.  Here, 
beyond  controversy,  is  a  state  of  mind  morally 
wrong ;  for  God  never  absolves  us  from  our  duties, 
however  he  may  sadden  them.  But  to  rebuke  the 
feelings  of  grief  in  such  a  case  is  to  cast  the  censure 
in  the  wrong  place ;  it  is  not  that  the  sorrow  is  ex- 
cessive, but  that  other  emotions  are  defective  in  their 
strength.  Nor  is  the  distinction  merely  verbal  and 
trivial.  For  the  natural  effect  of  such  misplaced 
blame  surely  is,  that  the  sufferer  will  endeavor  simply 
to  abate  the  intensity  of  his  sorrow,  to  extrude  from 
his  mind  the  emotions  which  are  charged  with  guilty 
excess;  his  aim  will  be  purely  negative,  not  to  think 
so  fixedly,  not  to  feel  so  profoundly,  respecting  the 
bereavement  which  has  fallen  upon  his  life.  And 


SORROW    NO    SIN.  75 

this  aim  is  directed  to  an  end  both  undesirable  and 
impracticable.  It  is  undesirable;  for  to  touch  the 
working  of  affections  with  partial  torpor,  to  benumb 
the  tenderness  without  adding  to  the  energy  of  the 
mind,  to  deaden  the  susceptibility  of  memory  with- 
out quickening  the  vividness  of  hope,  would  surely 
be  no  improvement  to  the  character ;  it  would  be  a 
mere  deduction  from  the  amount  of  mind ;  and  sor- 
row is  at  least  better  than  dulness  of  soul.  It  is, 
moreover,  impracticable ;  for  our  nature  affords  us  no 
means  of  exciting  a  negative  and  destructive  action 
upon  our  own  characters.  One  class  of  feelings 
can  be  extinguished  only  by  the  creation  of  another ; 
one  sentiment  banished  only  by  inviting  the  antago- 
nism of  another;  one  interest  supplanted  only  by  the 
stronger  occupancy  of  another.  So  long  as  this  is 
unperceived,  the  over-grieving  heart  will  seek  in  vain 
to  discipline  itself.  Thinking  of  its  sorrow  as  too 
much,  instead  of  its  sense  of  duty  as  too  little,  it 
fails  to  meet  pointedly  its  own  remedy.  The  will 
feebly  casts  about  its  efforts  in  the  dark  regions  of 
the  mind  ;  wastes  its  vigor  in  trying  to  forget ;  some- 
times fancies  forgetfulness ;  then  pretends  it;  assumes 
a  hollow  tranquillity,  and  affects  to  itself  and  others 
an  interest  in  topics  and  in  duties  which  are  not 
truly  loved,  for  they  have  never  been  truly  and  dis- 
tinctly sought.  From  all  such  aimless  directions  of 
the  will  there  arises  a  far  greater  evil  than  simple 
failure  ;  an  unconscious  insincerity  grows  up,  a  hazy 
perception  of  our  real  mental  condition,  a  confusion 
of  actual  and  fictitious  feelings,  of  emotions  which 
we  merely  imagine  with  those  which  we  truly  expe- 
rience, than  which  few  states  of  character  can  be 
more  perilous  to  moral  power  and  progress.  The 


76  SORROW    XO    SIN". 

wise  interpreter  of  his  own  nature  will  let  his  mourn- 
ing affections  alone.  To  interfere  with  them  would 
be  wrestling  with  his  own  strength.  But  he  will 
draw  forth,  into  prominent  light,  sentiments  now 
sleeping  idly  in  the  shaded  recesses  of  his  mind. 
He  will  summon  up  the  sense  of  responsibility,  to 
rouse  him  with  the  spectacle  of  his  relations  to  God 
his  Father,  and  his  brother,  man  ;  to  recount  to  him 
the  deeds  of  duty  and  the  toils  of  thought,  which  are 
yet  to  be  achieved  ere  life  is  done  ;  to  show  him  the 
circle  of  high  faculties,  which  the  Creator  has  given 
him  to  ennoble  and  refine,  and  keep  ready  for  a  world 
where  thought  and  virtue  are  immortalized.  He  will 
call  forth  his  affections  for  the  living  who  surround 
him,  and  whom  yet  it  is  his  happiness  to  love,  and 
his  obligation  to  bless.  And  these  sympathies  will 
be  fruitful  in  work  for  his  hands,  and  interests  re- 
freshing to  his  heart.  To  preserve  in  his  home  the 
graceful  order  of  pure  and  peaceful  affections ;  to 
omit  in  the  world  no  delicate  attention  of  friendship; 
to  forget  not  the  claims  of  poverty,  and  ignorance, 
and  sin,  to  the  compassion  of  all  who  would  be  faith- 
ful to  their  kind;  —  here  are  invitations  enough  to 
the  aspirings  of  benevolence,  to  bid  the  drooping  soul 
look  up.  And  the  sufferer  will  evoke  the  spirit  of 
Christian  trust  and  hope.  For,  as  the  memory  of 
bereaved  affection  is  grief,  so  is  its  hope  the  restorer 
of  peace  ;  from  the  past  is  forced  on  us  the  sense  of 
loss ;  from  the  future  rises  the  expectation  of  recov- 
ery; in  traversing  the  past,  our  thoughts  glide  along 
a  procession  of  dear  events  arrested  by  a  tomb ;  in 
conceiving  of  the  future,  they  behold  the  same  events 
opening  into  renewed  being,  and  spreading  them- 
selves in  all  blessed  varieties  along  the  vistas  of 


SORROW    NO    SIN.  77 

interminable  life ;  the  sadness  of  each  successive 
point  of  remembrance  are  reversed,  its  losses  regath- 
ered  ;  its  tears,  as  it  were,  unwept  before  the  smile  of 
God ;  its  plaints  unsung  amid  the  harmonies  of 
heaven ;  its  sins  untwined  by  the  wounding  yet 
healing  hand  of  an  angel  penitence.  Invoke  the 
spirit  of  this  trust ;  and  though  sorrow  may  not  dry 
its  tears,  it  rises  to  a  dignity  above  despair. 

It  is  not  unusual  to  speak  of  sorrow  for  the  dead 
as  expressing  a  distrust  of  the  Providence  of  God, 
and  a  doubt  of  an  eternal  hereafter.  In  this,  how- 
ever, there  is  but  little  truth.  True  it  is,  wherever 
the  reason  actually  disbelieves  the  great  facts  of  a 
Divine  government  and  human  immortality,  bereave- 
ment must  indeed  fall  upon  the  heart  with  terrific 
weight.  It  is  then  a  blow  of  tyrannic  fate,  a  visible 
stroke  of  annihilation,  a  triumph  of  pure  and  final 
evil ;  and  were  it  not  that  the  mind  of  hopeless  un- 
belief usually  permits  the  susceptibility  of  its  affec- 
tions to  grow  dull,  and  seeks  protection  from  the 
tenor  of  its  views  by  a  spontaneous  incasement  of 
insensibility,  its  impressions  from  death  would  be 
appalling.  But  though  unbelief  may  be  a  natural 
cause  of  uncontrolled  sorrow,  it  by  no  means  follows 
that  such  sorrow  implies  unbelief.  It  is  easy  to  say, 
that  if  we  acknowledged  God  to  be  good  in  all  his 
dispensations,  and  trusted  in  some  blessed  spirit 
secreted  in  the  present  loss,  we  could  not  deeply 
mourn.  I  ask,  is  it  reasonable  to  expect  this  abstract 
conviction  to  overpower  a  visible  privation?  As- 
suage and  sanctify  the  grief  it  unquestionably  will ; 
but  to  heal  entirely  is  beyond  its  power.  The  va- 
cancy in  home  and  heart  is  a  thing  felt ;  its  issue  in 
good  is  a  thing  believed  in  and  imagined ;  that  the 


78  SORROW    NO    SIX. 

blessings  of  the  past  are  gone,  is  a  reality  in  the 
present ;  that  they  will  be  restored  is  as  yet  but  a 
vision  in  the  future.  The  degree  in  which  faith 
imparts  consolation  will  somewhat  depend  on  the 
natural  vigor  of  the  imaginative  faculty  ;  affliction  is 
a  pressure  of  actual  experience  ;  faith  is  a  series  of 
mental  creations  ;  its  realities  are  invisible  and  intan- 
gible; a  mind  bound  down  by  the  chain  of  experi- 
ence, a  mind  whose  memory  is  more  faithful  than  its 
conceptions  are  excursive,  will  catch  but  faint  and 
distant  glimpses  of  the  blessed  idealities  of  hope. 
And  without  one  moment's  murmuring  against  the 
benignity  of  God,  or  doubt  respecting  his  promised 
future,  such  a  mind  may  be  ill  able  to  reach  the  ever- 
flowing  fountain  of  his  peace. 

Nor  is  it  less  unjust  to  prefer  against  sorrow  for 
the  dead  the  charge  of  selfishness.  Selfish  !  What, 
that  pure  affection  bowed  and  broken  to  the  earth ! 
Yearning  only  to  discharge  again,  were  it  possible, 
but  the  humblest  service  of  love !  What  would  it 
not  do,  what  sacrifice  of  self  would  it  not  make, 
what  toils,  what  watching,  would  it  not  hold  light, 
might  it  be  permitted  to  perform  one  office  for  the 
departed !  —  unseen,  unfelt,  unheard,  without  the 
hope  of  a  requiting  smile,  to  shed  on  that  spirit  one 
silent  blessing!  Surely  this  insult  to  human  grief 
must  be  the  invention  of  cold  hearts,  needing  a  justi- 
fication for  their  own  insensibility.  True  it  is,  there 
is  no  need  to  mourn  for  those  who  are  removed. 
True  it  is,  we  weep  not  for  them,  but  for  ourselves 
and  for  our  children.  It  is  we  only  that  suffer  and 
are  sad.  But  emotions  are  not  selfish,  simply  be- 
cause they  are  experienced  by  ourselves ;  were  it  so, 
every  joy  and  sorrow  would  be  branded  by  that 


SORROW    NO    SIN.  79 

odious  name.  They  are  selfish  only  when  they  are 
full  of  the  idea  of  self, — when  self  is  their  object, 
as  well  as  their  subject;  when  they  tempt  us  to 
prefer  our  own  personal  and  exclusive  happiness  to 
that  of  others,  and  to  trample  on  a  brother's  feelings 
in  the  chase  after  our  own  good.  Of  this  there  is 
nothing  in  the  tears  of  bereavement ;  they  are  the 
tribute  not  of  our  self-regarding  but  of  our  sym- 
pathetic nature.  At  last,  indeed,  when  the  burst  of 
grief  has  had  its  natural  way,  they  lead  us  to  a  gen- 
erous joy.  For,  as  we  weep,  we  think  how  blessed 
are  the  departed,  who  '  rest  from  their  labors,  while 
their  works  do  follow  them  ; '  their  pure  hearts  jarred 
no  more  by  the  harshnesses  of  this  oft  discordant  life  ; 
their  earnest  minds  drinking  of  the  perennial  fount 
of  truth  ;  their  frailties  cast  away  with  the  coil  of 
mortality  they  have  left  behind  ;  their  sainted  love 
waiting  to  receive  us,  as  we  too  may  one  by  one 
pass  the  dark  limits  which  sever  us  from  their  em- 
brace, and  seek  with  them  the  peace  and  progress  of 
the  skies. 


VI. 

CHEISTIAN  PEACE. 

JOHN  xiv.  27. 

PEACE  I   LEAVE  WITH  YOU  :    MY  PEACE  I  GIVE  UNTO  YOU  :    NOT  AS   THE 
WORLD  GIVETH,  GIVE  I  UNTO  YOU. 

THIS  was  a  strange  benediction  to  proceed  from 
the  Man  of  Sorrows,  at  the  dreariest  moment  of  his 
life;  —  strange  at  least  to  those  who  look  only  to  his 
outward  career,  his  incessant  contact  with  misery  and 
sin,  his  absolute  solitude  of  purpose,  his  lot  stricken 
with  sadness  ever  new  from  the  temptation  to  the 
cross ;  —  but  not  strange  perhaps  to  those  who  heard 
the  deep  and  quiet  tones  in  which  this  oracle  of 
promise  went  forth,  —  the  divinest  music  from  the 
centre  of  the  darkest  fate.  He  was  on  the  bosom  of 
the  beloved  disciple,  and  in  the  midst  of  those  who 
should  have  cheered  him  in  that  hour  with  such  com- 
forts as  fidelity  can  always  offer;  but  who,  failing  in 
their  duty  to  his  griefs,  found  the  sadness  creep  upon 
themselves;  while  he,  seeking  to  give  peace  to  them, 
found  it  himself  profusely  in  the  gift.  It  was  not  till 
he  had  finished  this  interview  and  effort  of  affection, 
and  from  the  warmth  of  that  evening  meal  and  the 
flush  of  its  deep  converse  they  had  issued  into  the 
chill  and  silent  midnight  air,  not  till  the  sanctity  of 
moonlight  (never  to  be  seen  by  him  again)  had  in- 
vested him,  and  coarse  fatigue  had  sunk  his  disciples 


CHRISTIAN    PEACE.  81 

into  sleep  upon  the  grass,  that  having  none  to  com- 
fort, he  found  the  anguish  fall  upon  himself.  Deprived 
of  the  embrace  of  John,  he  flew  to  the  bosom  of  the 
Father ;  and  after  a  momentary  strife,  recovered  in 
trust  the  serenity  he  had  found  in  toil ;  and  while  his 
followers  lie  stretched  in  earthly  slumber,  he  reaches  a 
divine  repose;  while  they,  yielding  to  nature,  gain  nei- 
ther strength  nor  courage  for  the  morrow,  he,  through 
the  vigils  of  agony,  rises  to  that  godlike  power,  on 
which  mockery  and  insult  beat  in  vain,  and  which 
has  made  the  cross,  —  then  the  emblem  of  abjectness 
and  guilt, —  the  everlasting  symbol  of  whatever  is 
Holy  and  Sublime. 

The  peace  of  Christ,  then,  was  the  fruit  of  combined 
toil  and  trust;  in  the  one  case  diffusing  itself  from  the 
centre  of  his  active  life,  in  the  other  from  that  of  his 
passive  emotions ;  enabling  him  in  the  one  case  to  do 
things  tranquilly,  in  the  other  to  see  things  tranquilly. 
Two  things  only  can  make  life  go  wrong  and  pain- 
fully with  us ;  when  we  suffer  or  suspect  misdirection 
and  feebleness  in  the  energies  of  love  and  duty  within 
us,  or  in  the  Providence  of  the  world  without  us: 
bringing,  in  the  one  case,  the  lassitude  of  an  unsatis- 
fied and  discordant  nature ;  in  the  other  the  melan- 
choly of  hopeless  views.  For  these  Christ  delivers  us 
by  a  summons  to  mingled  toil  and  trust.  And  here- 
in does  his  peace  differ  from  that  which  'the  world 
giveth,'  —  that  its  prime  essential  is  not  ease,  but 
strife;  not  self-indulgence,  but  self-sacrifice;  not  ac- 
quiescence in  evil  for  the  sake  of  quiet,  but  conflict 
with  it  for  the  sake  of  God ;  not,  in  short,  a  prudent 
accommodation  of  the  mind  to  the  world,  but  a  reso- 
lute subjugation  of  the  world  to  the  best  conceptions 
of  the  mind.  Amply  has  the  promise  to  leave  behind 


82  CHRISTIAN  PEACE. 

him  such  a  peace  been  since  fulfilled.  It  was  fulfilled 
to  the  apostles  who  first  received  it ;  and  has  been 
realized  again  by  a  succession  of  faithful  men  to 
whom  they  have  delivered  it. 

The  word  'Peace'  denotes  the  absence  of  jar  and 
conflict ;  a  condition  free  from  the  restlessness  of  fruit- 
less desire,  the  forebodings  of  anxiety,  the  stings  of 
enmity.  It  may  be  destroyed  by  discordance  between 
the  lot  without  and  the  mind  within,  where  the  human 
being  is  in  an  obviously  false  position,  —  an  evil  rare 
and  usually  self-curative;  or  by  a  discordance  wholly 
internal,  among  the  desires  and  affections  themselves. 
The  first  impulse  of  'the  natural  man'  is,  to  seek 
peace  by  mending  his  external  condition;  to  quiet 
desire  by  increase  of  ease;  to  banish  anxiety  by  in- 
crease of  wealth ;  to  guard  against  hostility  by  making 
himself  too  strong  for  it ;  to  build  up  his  life  into  a 
fortress  of  security  and  a  palace  of  comfort,  where  he 
may  softly  lie,  though  tempests  beat  and  rain  de- 
scends. The  spirit  of  Christianity  casts  away  at  once 
this  whole  theory  of  peace ;  declares  it  the  most  chi- 
merical of  dreams ;  and  proclaims  it  impossible  even 
to  make  this  kind  of  reconciliation  between  the  soul 
and  the  life  wherein  it  acts.  As  well  might  the 
athlete  demand  a  victory  without  a  foe.  To  the 
noblest  faculties  of  soul,  rest  is  disease  and  torture. 
The  understanding  is  commissioned  to  grapple  with 
ignorance,  the  conscience  to  confront  the  powers  of 
moral  evil,  the  affections  to  labor  for  the  wretched 
and  oppressed;  nor  shall  any  peace  be  found,  till 
these,  which  reproach  and  fret  us  in  our  most  ela- 
borate ease,  put  forth  an  incessant  and  satisfying 
energy;  till  instead  of  conciliating  the  world,  we 
vanquish  it;  and  rather  than  sit  still,  in  the  sickness 


CHRISTIAN  PEACE.  83 

of  luxury,  for  it  to  amuse  our  perceptions,  we  pre- 
cipitate ourselves  upon  it  to  mould  it  into  a  new 
creation.  Attempt  to  make  all  smooth  and  pleasant 
without,  and  you  thereby  create  the  most  corroding 
of  anxieties,  and  stimulate  the  most  insatiable  of  ap- 
petites within.  But  let  there  be  harmony  within,  let 
no  clamors  of  self  drown  the  voice  which  is  entitled 
to  authority  there,  let  us  set  forth  on  the  mission  of 
duty,  resolved  to  live  for  it  alone,  to  close,  with  every 
resistance  that  obstructs  it,  and  march  through  every 
peril  that  awaits  it;  and  in  the  consciousness  of  im- 
mortal power,  the  sense  of  mortal  ill  will  vanish;  and 
the  peace  of  God  well  nigh  extinguish  the  sufferings 
of  the  man.  '  In  the  world  we  may  have  tribulation ; 
in  Christ  we  shall  have  peace.' 

This  peace,  so  remote  from  torpor, —  arising  indeed 
from  the  intense  action  of  the  greatest  of  all  ideas, 
those  of  duty,  of  immortality,  of  God,  —  fell  accord- 
ing to  the  promise  on  the  first  disciples.  Not  in  vain 
did  Jesus  tell  them  in  their  sorrows  that  the  Com- 
forter would  come ;  nor  falsely  did  he  define  this  bless- 
ed visitant,  as  '  the  spirit  of  truth,' — the  soul  rever- 
entially faithful  to  its  convictions,  and  expressing 
clearly  in  action  its  highest  aspirings.  Such  peace 
had  Stephen,  when  before  the.  Sanhedrim  that  was 
striving  to  hush  up  the  recent  story  of  the  Cross,  he 
prociained  aloud  the  sequel  of  the  Ascension ;  and 
priests  and  elders  arose  and  stopped  their  ears,  and 
thrust  him  out  to  death; — he  had  this  peace;  else 
how,  if  a  heaven  of  divinest  tranquillity  had  not 
opened  to  him  and  revealed  to  him  the  proximity 
of  Christ  to  God,  how,  as  the  stone  struck  his  un- 
covered and  uplifted  head,  could  he  have  so  calmly 
said,  'Lord,  lay  not  this  sin  to  their  charge?'  Such 


84  CHRISTIAN  PEACE. 

peace  had  Paul,  —  at  least  when  he  ceased  to  rebel 
against  his  noble  nature,  and  became,  instead  of 
the  emissary  of  persecution,  the  ambassador  of  God. 
Was  there  ever  a  life  of  less  ease  and  security, 
yet  of  more  buoyant  and  rejoicing  spirit,  than  his? 
What  weight  did  he  not  cast  aside,  to  run  the  race 
that  was  set  before  him  ?  What  tie  of  home  or 
nation  did  he  not  break,  that  he  might  join  in  one 
the  whole  family  of  God  ?  For  forty  years  the  scoff 
of  synagogues  and  the  outcast  of  his  people,  he  for- 
got the  privations  of  the  exile  in  the  labors  of  the 
missionary;  flying  from  charges  of  sedition  he  dis- 
seminated the  principles  of  peace;  persecuted  from 
city  to  city,  he  yet  created  in  each  a  centre  of  pure 
worship  and  Christian  civilization,  and  along  the 
coasts  of  Asia,  and  colonies  of  Macedonia,  and  cita- 
dels of  Greece,  dropped  link  after  link  of  the  great 
chain  of  truth  that  shall  yet  embrace  the  world. 
Amid  the  joy  of  making  converts,  he  had  also  the 
affliction  of  making  martyrs;  to  witness  the  suffer- 
ings, perhaps  to  bear  the  reproaches,  of  survivors; 
with  weeping  heart  to  rebuke  the  fears,  and  sustain 
the  faith,  of  many  a  doubter;  and  in  solitude  and 
bonds  to  send  forth  the  effusions  of  his  earnest  spirit 
to  quicken  the  life,  and  renovate  the  gladness,  of  the 
confederate  churches.  Yet  when  did  speculation  at 
its  ease  ever  speak  with  vigor  so  noble  and  cheerful- 
ness so  fresh,  as  his  glorious  letters ;  which  recount 
his  perils  by  land  and  sea,  his  sorrows  with  friend  and 
foe,  and  declared  that  'none  of  these  things  move' 
him ;  which  show  him  projecting  incessant  work,  yet 
ready  for  instant  rest;  conscious  that  already  he  has 
fought  the  good  fight,  and  willing  to  finish  his  course 
and  resign  the  field ;  but  prepared,  if  needs  be,  to 


CHRISTIAN  PEACE.  85 

grasp  again  the  sword  of  the  spirit,  and  go  forth  in 
quest  of  wider  victories.  Does  any  one  suppose, 
that  it  would  have  been  more  peaceful  to  look  back 
on  a  life  less  exposed  and  adventurous  ?  on  a  lot 
sheltered  and  secure?  on  soft  bedded  comfort,  and 
unbroken  plenty,  and  conventional  compliance?  No! 
it  is  only  beforehand  that  we  mistake  these  things  for 
peace:  in  the  retrospect  we  know  them  better,  and 
would  exchange  them  all  for  one  vanquished  tempta- 
tion in  the  desert,  for  one  patient  bearing  of  the  cross ! 
What,  —  when  all  is  over,  and  we  lie  upon  the  last 
bed,  —  what  is  the  worth  to  us  of  all  our  guilty  com- 
promises, of  all  the  moments  stolen  from  duty  to  be 
given  to  ease  ?  If  Paul  had  cowered  before  the  tri- 
bunal of  Nero,  and  trembled  at  his  comrades'  blood, 
and,  instead  of  baring  his  neck  to  the  imperial  sword 
had  purchased  by  poor  evasions  another  year  of  life, 
—  where  would  that  year  have  been  now  ?  —  a  lost 
drop  in  the  deep  waters  of  time, —  yet  not  lost,  but 
rather  mingled  as  a  poison  in  the  refreshing  stream 
of  good  men's  goodness  by  which  Providence  fertil- 
izes the  ages. 

The  peace  of  Christ,  thus  inherited  by  his  disci- 
ples, and  growing  out  of  a  living  spirit  of  duty  and 
of  love,  contrasts,  not  merely  with  guilty  ease,  but 
with  that  mere  mechanical  facility  in  blameless  ac- 
tion which  habit  gives.  There  is  something  faithless 
and  ignoble  in  the  very  reasonings  sometimes  em- 
ployed to  recommend  virtuous  habits.  They  are 
urged  upon  us,  because  they  smooth  the  way  of 
right ;  we  are  invited  to  them  for  the  sake  of  ease. 
Adopted  in  such  a  temper,  duty  after  all  makes  its 
bargain  with  indulgence,  and  is  not  yet  pursued  for 
its  own  sake  and  with  the  allegiance  of  a  loving 


86  CHRISTIAN    PEACE. 

heart.  Moreover,  whoever  has  a  true  conscience  sees 
that  there  is  a  fallacy  in  this  persuasion  ;  for  when- 
ever habits  become  mechanical,  they  cease  to  satisfy 
the  requirements  of  duty  ;  the  obligations  of  which 
enlarge  indefinitely  with  our  powers,  demanding  an 
undiminished  tension  of  the  will,  and  an  ever-con- 
stant life  of  the  affections.  It  can  never  be,  that  a 
soul  which  has  a  heaven  open  to  its  view,  which  is 
stationed  here,  not  simply  to  accommodate  itself  to 
the  arrangements  of  this  world,  but  also  to  school 
itself  for  the  spirit  of  another,  is  intended  to  rest  in 
mere  automatic  regularities.  When  the  mind  is 
thrown  into  other  scenes,  and  finds  itself  in  the 
society  of  the  world  invisible,  suddenly  introduced 
to  the  heavenly  wise  and  the  sainted  good,  —  what 
peace  can  it  expect  from  mere  dry  tendencies  to  acts 
no  longer  practicable,  and  blameless  things  now  left 
behind  ?  No  ;  it  must  have  that  pure  love  which  is 
nowhere  a  stranger,  in  earth  or  heaven  ;  that  vital 
goodness  of  the  affections,  that  adjusts  itself  at  once 
to  every  scene  where  there  is  truth  and  holiness  to 
venerate;  that  conscience,  wakeful  and  devout,  which 
enters  with  instant  joy  on  any  career  of  duty  and 
progress  opened  to  its  aspirations.  And  even  in  '  the 
life  that  now  is,'  the  mere  mechanist  of  virtue,  who 
copies  precepts  with  mimetic  accuracy,  is  too  fre- 
quently at  fault,  to  have  even  the  poor  peace  which 
custom  promises.  He  is  at  home  only  on  his  own 
beat.  An  emergency  perplexes  him,  and  too  often 
tempts  him  disgracefully  to  fly.  He  wants  the  in- 
ventiveness by  which  a  living  heart  of  duty  seizes 
the  resources  of  good,  and  uses  them  to  the  last ; 
and  the  courage  by  which  love,  like  honor,  starts  to 
the  post  of  noble  danger,  and  maintains  it  till,  by 


CHRISTIAN    PEACE.  87 

such  fidelity,  it  becomes  a  place  of  danger  no  more. 
It  is  a  vain  attempt  to  comprise  in  rules  and  aphor- 
isms all  the  various  moral  exigencies  of  life.  Hardly 
does  such  legality  suffice  to  define  the  small  portion 
of  right  and  wrong  contemplated  in  human  jurispru- 
dence. But  the  true  instincts  of  a  pure  mind,  like 
the  creative  genius  of  art,  frames  rules  most  perfect 
in  the  act  of  obeying  them,  and  throws  the  materials 
of  life  into  the  fairest  attitudes  and  the  justest  pro- 
portions. He  whose  allegiance  is  paid  to  the  mere 
preceptive  system,  shapes  and  carves  his  duty  into 
the  homeliest  of  wooden  idols;  he  who  has  the  spirit 
of  Christ  turns  it  into  an  image  breathing  and  di- 
vine. Children  of  God  in  the  noblest  sense,  we  are 
not  without  something  of  his  creative  spirit  in  our 
hearts.  The  power  is  there,  to  separate  the  light 
from  the  darkness  within  us,  and  set  in  the  firma- 
ment of  the  soul  luminaries  to  guide  and  gladden 
us,  for  seasons  and  for  years ;  power  to  make  the 
herbage  green  beneath  our  feet,  and  beckon  happy 
creatures  into  existence  around  our  path ;  power  to 
mould  the  clay  of  our  earthly  nature  into  the  like- 
ness of  God  most  High  ;  and  thus  only  have  we 
power  to  look  back  in  peace  upon  our  work,  and  find 
a  sabbath  rest  upon  the  thought,  that,  morning  and 
evening,  all  is  good. 

But  the  peace  which  Christ  felt  and  bequeathed 
was  the  result  of  trust,  no  less  than  toil.  However 
immersed  in  action,  and  engaged  in  enterprises  of 
conscience,  every  life  has  its  passive  moments,  when 
the  operation  is  reversed,  and  power,  instead  of  going 
from  us,  returns  upon  us ;  and  the  scenes  of  our 
existence  present  themselves  to  us  as  objects  of 
speculation  and  emotion.  Sometimes  we  are  forced 


88  CHRISTIAN    PEACE. 

into  quietude  in  pauses  of  exhaustion  or  of  grief: 
stretched  upon  the  bed  of  pain,  to  hear  the  great 
world  murmuring  and  rolling  by;  or  lifted  into  the 
watch-tower  of  solitude,  to  look  over  the  vast  plain 
of  humanity,  and  from  a  height  that  covers  it  with 
silence,  observe  its  groups  shifting  and  traversing  like 
spirits  in  a  city  of  the  dead.  At  such  times,  our 
peace  must  depend  on  the  view  under  which  our 
faith  or  our  fears  may  exhibit  this  mighty  '  field  of 
the  world : '  on  the  forces  of  evil,  of  fortuity,  or  of 
God,  which  we  suppose  to  be  secretly  directing  the 
changes  on  the  scene,  and  calling  up  the  brief  appa- 
rition of  generation  after  generation.  And  so  great 
and  terrible  is  the  amount  of  evil,  physical  and  moral, 
in  the  great  community  of  men ;  so  vast  the  numbers 
sunk  in  barbarism,  compared  with  the  few  who  more 
nobly  represent  our  nature ;  so  many  and  piercing 
(could  we  but  hear  them)  the  cries  of  unpitied 
wretchedness,  that  with  every  beat  of  the  pendulum 
wander  unnoticed  into  the  air ;  so  dense  the  crowds 
that  are  thrust  together  in  the  deepest  recesses  of 
want,  and  that  crawl  through  the  loathsome  hives  of 
sin  ;  that  only  two  men  can  look  through  the  world 
without  dismay  ;  he,  on  the  one  hand,  who  suffering 
himself  to  be  bewildered  with  momentary  horror, 
and  in  the  confusion  of  his  emotions,  to  mistake 
what  he  sees  for  a  moral  chaos,  turns  his  back  in  the 
despair  of  fatalism,  crying,  '  let  us  eat  and  drink,  for 
to-morrow  we  die  ; '  and  he,  on  the  other,  who,  with 
the  discernment  of  a  deeper  wisdom,  penetrates 
through  the  shell  of  evil  to  the  kernel  and  the  seed 
of  good ;  who  perceives  in  suffering  and  temptation 
the  resistance  which  alone  can  render  virtue  mani- 
fest, and  conscience  great,  and  existence  venerable ; 


CHRISTIAN    PEACE.  89 

who   recognizes,   even   in   the   gigantic    growth    of 
guilt,  the  grasp  of  infinite  desires,  and  the  perver- 
sion  of    godlike    capacities;    who    sees   how   soon, 
were  God  to  take  up   his  Omnipotence,  and  snatch 
from  his  creature  man  the  care  of  the  world  and  the 
work   of   self-perfection,  all  that  deforms  might  be 
swept   away,    and   the    meanest  lifted   through   the 
interval  that  separates  them  from  the   noblest ;  and 
who  therefore  holds  fast  to  the  theory  of  hope,  and 
the   kindred   duty  of   effort ;    takes   shelter  beneath 
the  universal  Providence  of  God ;  and  seeing  time 
enough  in  his  vast  cycles  for  the  growth  and  con- 
summation of  every  blessing,  can  be  patient  as  well 
as  trust ;  can  resign  the  selfish  vanity  of  doing  all 
things  himself,  and   making  a  finish  before  he  dies ; 
and  cheerfully  give  his  life  to  build  up  the  mighty 
temple  of  human  improvement,  though  no  inscrip- 
tion mark  it  for  glory,  and  it  be  as  one  of  the  hid- 
den stones  of  the  sanctuary,  visible  only  to  the  eye 
of  God.     Such  was  the  spirit  and  the  faith  which 
Jesus  left,  and    in   which    his   first   disciples   found 
their   rest.      Within   the   infinitude    of    the    divine 
mercy  trouble  did   but  fold  them   closer ;   the   per- 
versity of  man  did  but  provoke  them  to  put  forth 
a    more   conquering   love ;    and   though   none  were 
ever   more   the   sport   of    the    selfish   interests    and 
prejudices  of  mankind,  or  came  into   contact  with 
a   more   desolate   portion    of   the    great   wastes    of 
humanity,  they  constructed  no  melancholy  theories; 
but   having   planted   many  a  rose   of   Sharon,  and 
made  their  little  portion  of  the  desert  smile,  departed 
in  the  faith,  that  the  green  margin  would  spread  as 
the  seasons  of  God  came  round,  till  the  mantle  of 
8* 


90  CHRISTIAN    PEACE. 

heaven  covered  the  earth,  and  it  ended  with  Eden 
as  it  had  begun. 

Between  these  two  sources  of  Christian  peace, 
virtuous  toil,  and  holy  trust,  there  is  an  intimate 
connection.  The  desponding  are  generally  the  indo- 
lent and  useless ;  not  the  tried  and  struggling,  but 
speculators  at  a  distance  from  the  scene  of  things, 
and  far  from  destitute  of  comforts  themselves.  Bar- 
ren of  the  most  blessed  of  human  sympathies, 
strangers  to  the  light  that  best  gladdens  the  heart 
of  man,  they  are  without  the  materials  of  a  bright 
and  hopeful  faith.  But  he  who  consecrates  himself, 
sees  at  once  how  God  may  sanctify  the  world ;  he 
whose  mind  is  rich  in  the  memory  of  moral  victo- 
ries, will  not  easily  believe  the  world  a  scene  of 
moral  defeats  ;  nor  was  it  ever  known  that  one  who, 
like  Paul,  labored  for  the  good  of  man,  despaired  of 
the  benevolence  of  God. 

Whoever  then  would  have  the  peace  of  Christ, 
let  him  seek  first  the  spirit  of  Christ.  Let  him  not 
fret  against  the  conditions  which  God  assigns  to  his 
being,  but  reverently  conform  himself  to  them,  and 
do  and  enjoy  the  good  which  they  allow.  Let  him 
cast  himself  freely  on  the  career  to  which  the  secret 
persuasion  of  duty  points,  without  reservation  of  hap- 
piness or  self;  and  in  the  exercise  which  its  diffi- 
culties give  to  his  understanding,  its  conflicts  to 
his  will,  its  humanities  to  his  affections,  he  shall 
find  that  united  action  of  his  whole  and  best  nature, 
that  inward  harmony,  that  moral  order,  which  eman- 
cipates from  the  anxieties  of  self,  and  unconsciously 
yields  the  divinest  repose.  The  shadows  of  darkest 
affliction  cannot  blot  out  the  inner  radiance  of  such 
a  mind  ;  the  most  tedious  years  move  lightly  and 


CHKISTIAK    PEACE.  91 

with  briefest  step  across  its  history  ;  for  it  is  con- 
scious of  its  immortality,  and  hastening  to  its  heaven. 
And  there  shall  its  peace  be  consummated  at  length  ; 
its  griefs  transmuted  into  delicious  retrospects  ;  its 
affections  fresh  and  ready  for  a  new  and  nobler 
career  ;  and  its  praise  confessing  that  this  final  '  peace 
of  God  '  doth  indeed  '  surpass  its  understanding.' 


VII. 

RELIGION  ON  FALSE  PRETENCES. 
JOHN  xr.  16. 

TE  HATE  NOT  CHOSEN  ME,  BUT  I  HAVE  CHOSEN  YOU. 

ONE  of  the  greatest  difficulties,  which  Christ  en- 
countered in  his  ministry,  was  to  shake  off  the  ad- 
herents who  came  to  him  on  false  pretences ;  and  to 
reduce  the  motives  of  his  disciples  to  the  simple  feel- 
ing of  faith  or  fealty,  which  was  the  only  tie  he  could 
endure  to  recognize.  Some  followed  him  because  they 
'  did  eat  of  the  loaves  and  were  filled.'  The  Sad- 
ducee  enjoyed  his  invective  against  the  Pharisee,  and 
the  Pharisee  was  willing  to  use  his  refutation  of  the 
Sadducee.  The  kind-hearted  rich  approved  of  the 
good  he  was  doing  among  the  poor;  the  severe 
delighted  in  his  rebukes  of  the  popular  corruption; 
the  patriotic  looked  to  him  as  the  ornament  of  his 
country,  and  the  marvel  of  his  age ;  and  only  the 
fewest  clung  to  him,  because  they  were  '  of  his 
sheep,'  and  knew  and  loved  his  voice.  His  many- 
sided  wisdom  turned  some  phase  of  excellence  or 
wonder  towards  every  spectator;  and  each  in  suc- 
cession was  worthy,  not  of  less,  but  of  far  more,  ad- 
miration than  it  received.  Yet  he  declined  the 
attachment  of  those  who  did  not  penetrate  to  the 
central  lines  of  all  his  truth  and  sanctity ;  refused  to 
be  judged  by  the  outward  appearance,  rather  than 


RELTGIOX    ON    FALSE    PRETENCES.  93 

the  inward  principle,  of  his  life ;  never  suffered  him- 
self to  be  regarded  as  an  object  of  others'  choice,  but 
himself  selected  for  his  own  such  as  were  taken  cap- 
tive in  soul  by  the  power  of  so  divine  a  spirit.  Those 
who  would  not  vow  allegiance  to  him  for  his  own 
sake,  and  take  up  for  him  the  cross  which  he  would 
bear  for  them,  might  go  their  way,  and  sorrowing  feel 
that  they  were  none  of  his. 

This  difficulty,  of  bringing  the  heart  to  a  pure 
simplicity  of  faith,  was  no  accident  peculiar  to  the 
personal  ministry  of  our  Lord.  Proceeding  from 
causes  which  human  nature  reproduces  in  every  age, 
it  still  interrupts  the  genuine  influence  of  his  religion; 
which  multitudes  hold  and  profess  on  false  and  in- 
sufficient grounds,  adducing  every  variety  of  excuse 
for  sanctioning  its  authority  ;  but  which  few  receive, 
as  too  great  to  be  patronized,  and  too  true  to  be 
proved.  The  ingenuity  and  restlessness  of  men  are 
perpetually  dissipating  the  primitive  impressions  of 
their  reason  and  conscience,  devising  elaborate  justi- 
fications of  that  which  best  justifies  itself,  and  multi- 
plying artificial  foundations  for  that  which  is  natural. 
And  the  evil  is,  that  when  the  insecurity  of  all  this 
comes  to  be  detected,  and  the  structure  of  our  own 
erection  is  found  to  be  crumbling  beneath  us,  it  is 
not  easy  to  recover  at  once  the  genuine  ground  of 
nature.  The  simple  perception  and  deep  intuitions 
of  the  soul  become- so  overlaid  by  acquired  modes  of 
thought  and  judgment,  that  all  faith -in  them,  and 
even  all  clear  consciousness  of  them,  are  lost;  and 
thus  the  original  sources  of  all  religious  conviction  are 
dried  up.  Some  of  the  spurious  forms  and  second- 
hand imitations  of  religious  principle,  always  one 
remove  from  the  reality  and  sincerity  of  faith,  I  pro- 
pose briefly  to  trace. 


94          RELIGION  OX  FALSE  PRETENCES. 

Religion  is  frequently  degraded,  not  only  by  its 
practical  supporters,  but  by  its  theoretical  expound- 
ers, into  a  mere  tool  of  expediency;  and  upheld  as 
the  most  approved  engine  for  the  production  of  good 
morals  and  the  maintenance  of  social  order.  Sup- 
port is  invited  to  it,  on  the  ground  that  men  are 
unmanageable  without  it;  that,  but  for  its  powerful 
hold  on  the  human  mind,  the  elements  of  repulsion 
would  become  ascendant  in  the  community,  and  dis- 
sipate it  into  a  multitude  of  individual  self-wills.  It 
is  a  shameful  spectacle,  when  its  own  representatives 
condescend  to  plead  for  it  thus;  and  go  ignominiously 
round,  supplicating  votes  in  its  behalf,  for  the  vacant 
office  of  Master  of  Police !  What  sort  of  obedience 
is  likely  to  be  rendered  to  a  creature  of  our  own 
appointment,  chosen  from  prudence,  and  removable 
'at  pleasure?  Nothing  can  be  more  evident  than 
that  such  advocates  are  thinking  only  of  restraining 
others,  and  are  by  no  means  filled  with  the  idea  of 
submission  themselves,  A  heart  occupied  and  soft- 
ened by  the  spirit  of  allegiance  itself  will  make  a 
quite  different  appeal;  will  never  dream  that  any 
suffrage  can  add  authority  to  the  faith  that  rules  it 
rightfully;  will  perhaps  think  it  somewhat  irreligious 
for  even  the  most  important  persons  to  offer  to  the 
Almighty  the  weight  of  their  great  influence;  and 
will  feel  that  things  divine  are  so  much  higher  than 
things  serviceable,  that  to  recommend  them  for  their 
use  is- to  deny  their  essence,  and  to  disown  their  obli- 
gation. Nay,  does  not  a  secret  voice  assure  us  all, 
that  short  of  the  sacrifice  of  self-will,  and  the  cheerful 
movement  within  the  limits  of  a  Supreme  Law,  there 
is  not  even  the  faint  beginning  of  religion;  and  that 
this  concern  for  the  common  good,  this  idea  of  giving 


HELIGION    ON    FALSE    PRETENCES.  95 

a  sanction  to  the  claims  of  piety,  is  an  evasion  of  that 
personal  surrender,  which  it  is  so  easy  to  approve  in 
others,  so  hard  to  achieve  within  ourselves  ?  This 
temper  feels  as  if  it  were  outside  the  great  and 
solemn  conditions  of  humanity,  and  in  concern  for 
others'  exposure  to  them,  lapses  into  forgetfulness 
itself;  as  if  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  strife  of 
temptation,  and  the  toil  of  duty,  and  the  cry  of  grief. 
The  complacent  patron  of  religion,  —  will  he  not  die? 
will  he  not  go,  all  alone,  into  the  silence  of  eternity, 
and  personally  look  into  the  reality  of  those  things 
of  which  he  has  always  approved  of  keeping  up  the 
show?  Will  he  not  stand  face  to  face  with  the  God 
whose  service  he  has  liberally  encouraged?  —  empty, 
it  is  to  be  feared,  of  the  only  offering  which  he  could 
tranquilly  present,  —  the  offer  of  himself;  and  thrown 
upon  the  Infinite,  not  as  a  child  upon  a  parent's 
bosom,  but  as  a  penitent  in  abasement  before  the 
Judge?  Nor  does  this  seem  so  distant,  that  there  is 
much  time  to  play  at  pretences  with  it  in  the  mean- 
while. As  sure  as  this  world  is  swimming  fast 
through  space  and  time,  we  are  all  afloat  in  the  same 
life-vessel;  and  have,  moreover,  a  voyage  before  us, 
of  which  even  the  stoutest  heart  may  well  think  in 
earnest. 

I  do  not,  of  course,  mean  that  religious  faith  does 
not  conduce  to  the  moral  order  of  society;  or  that 
estimable  men  may  not  innocently  be  aware  of  this, 
and  reckon  on  it.  But  I  do  say,  that  it  is  not  upon 
this  that  the  obligatory  character  of  religion  rests ; 
that  this  social  action  is  not  the  source,  but  the  effect, 
of  its  binding  authority  upon  the  mind;  and  that  to 
look  first  to  its  benefits,  and  then  to  its  sanctity,  is  to 
invert  the  true  order  of  our  moral  life,  and  set  the 


96  EEL1GION    ON    FALSE    PRETENCES. 

pyramid  of  duty  upon  its  point  rather  than  its  base. 
If  the  great  principles  of  religion  were  false,  if  it  were 
all  a  fiction,  that  we  lived  under  a  God  and  in  front 
of  a  heaven,  it  is  obvious  that  these  beliefs  would 
have  no  claim  upon  us;  that  their  relation  to  our 
conscience  would  even  be  reversed ;  and  that  what- 
ever support  they  might  appear  to  afford  to  the 
laws  of  rectitude  and  peace,  our  sole  duty  to  them,  as 
delusions,  would  be  to  expose  and  expel  them ;  the 
looser  dictates  of  expediency  yielding  at  once  to  the 
severer  rule  of  veracity.  And  it  is  therefore  not  in 
their  usefulness,  but  in  their  truth,  that  their  authority 
resides;  it  is  with  that  alone  that  our  allegiance  to 
them  must  stand  or  fall ;  to  that  alone  our  souls  are 
permitted  to  bow;  nay,  on  that  alone  that  all  their 
moral  excellence  depends.  A  devout  man  does  his* 
duty  better  than  another,  because  he  sees  his  position 
more  completely;  gazes  over  the  wide  field  of  his 
relations  visible  and  invisible;  exaggerates  nothing 
from  its  proximity,  and  overlooks  nothing  from  its 
distance ;  but  with  the  clear  sense  of  moral  proportion 
receives  from  all  the  true  impression,  and  gives  to  all 
the  fit  affection.  He  does  not  render  his  mental  view 
false  by  ignoring  the  whole  region  that  lies  beyond 
experience,  and  treating  it  as  if  it  had  no  existence ; 
or  fever  his  passions  and  fret  away  his  peace  by  im- 
prisoning the  whole  energies  of  his  nature  within 
some  narrow  object,  —  a  section  only  of  the  life 
which  they  are  qualified  to  fill.  It  is  because  his 
mind  is  right,  that  his  hand  does  right. 

The  same  insult,  which  is  committed  against  reli- 
gion by  representing  it  as  the  tool  of  social  order, 
is  repeated,  when  it  is  prescribed  as  the  only  means 
of  finding  any  semblance  of  comfort  in  circumstances 


BELIGION    0^    FALSE    PRETENCES.  97 

otherwise  desperate.  No  one  can  be  ignorant  that  it 
is  frequently  exhibited  in  this  light;  and  that  men  are 
advised  to  lay  by  a  prudent  store  of  it,  as  a  resource 
of  happiness  during  the  dreary  winter  of  distress. 
Nothing  can  be  more  true  to  nature  than  the  fact 
alleged ;  nothing  more  false  than  the  exhortation 
founded  on  it.  Certain  it  is,  there  is  no  real  con- 
quest of  evil,  except  by  the  devout  mind,  that  can 
bleed  beneath  the  thorny  lot,  yet  clasp  it  in  closer 
love,  like  the  piercing  crucifix  of  self-mortification 
upon  the  breast.  It  is  certain  that  a  pure  trust,  de- 
fying nothing  that  is  sent  of  God,  but  bending  with 
self-renunciation  before  his  whirlwinds  sweeping  by, 
feels  least  resistance  of  terrible  necessity  chafing 
against  its  peace.  But  in  mere  cupidity  for  the  com- 
forts of  faith  there  is  no  religion,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
the  total  privation  of  all  religion ;  there  is  precisely 
that  deliberate  reservation  of  self,  that  fencing  of  it 
round  against  the  assaults  of  unhappiness,  that  mere 
service  for  hire,  in  which  is  the  very  essence  of  dis- 
loyalty to  heaven.  Nor  does  God  ever  award  the 
least  success  to  these  insurance  speculations  on  his 
service;  and  only  those  who  give  themselves  up  to 
him  without  a  question  find  their  happiness  returned. 
Vain  every  way  are  all  these  attempts  to  make  that 
which  is  divine  subordinate  to  our  personal  ends :  we 
only  bring  down  the  awful  rebuke,  '  Ye  have  not 
chosen  me,  but  I  have  chosen  you.' 

Religion,  again,  is  often  represented,  not  exactly  as 
the  instrument  for  producing  good  morals,  but  as  in 
fact  the  very  same  with  good  morals.  We  hear  the 
sentiment  constantly  repeated,  that,  after  all,  the 
service  of  man  is  the  truest  service  of  God.  Now 
if  this  maxim  mean  that  so  long  as  human  good  is 


98  RELIGION    ON    FALSE    PRETENCES. 

effected,  it  does  not  signify  on  what  principles  it  is 
done,  no  statement  could  well  be  more  false.  Let  us 
only  see.  Here  is  a  man,  who  serves  the  common- 
wealth from  ambition,  and  merits  the  good  will  of  his 
neighbors,  that  he  may  mount  by  it.  He  selects 
some  conspicuous  utility,  labors  at  it  visibly  enough, 
and  defends  himself  from  the  aversion  of  the  few  by 
surrounding  himself  with  the  plaudits  of  the  many; 
and  if  you  look  at  him,  busy  before  the  face  of  his 
community,  you  will  not  fail  to  see  the  manner  of  his 
diligence ;  that  in  proportion  as  they  raise  the  shout, 
he  prosecutes  the  work;  that  when  they  are  tired, 
he  grows  idle ;  and  when  they  can  lift  their  voices 
no  higher,  and  no  more  can  be  gained  by  laboring 
for  their  good,  either  he  begins  to  toil  in  the  opposite 
direction,  or,  throwing  down  all  implements  of  work,' 
gives  himself  up  to  strange  gambols,  at  which  the 
spectators,  who  have  exhausted  all  their  praise,  may 
at  least  gratify  him  by  being  astonished. 

Here  is  another  man,  smitten,  we  will  say,  with 
honest  pity  for  the  degradation  and  misery  of  the 
great  mass  of  every  civilized  society;  indignant,  it 
may  be,  (who  can  help  it  ?)  that  all  citizens  have  not 
enough  food  and  enough  knowledge  ;  studious  of  the 
economic  causes  which  interfere  with  such  a  result ; 
but  unhappily  seeing  no  further  than  the  mere  sen- 
tient and  intellectual  man,  and  possibly  dreaming 
that  their  oppression  and  wretchedness  have  been 
aggravated,  instead  of  assuaged,  by  the  restraints  of 
the  moral  and  the  aspirations  of  the  spiritual  nature. 
You  see  him  accordingly,  —  a  benignant,  thinking 
animal,  —  enthusiastically  devoted  to  projects  for 
making  the  life  of  man  comfortable,  intelligent,  and 
clean ;  primarily  impressed  with  the  necessity  of 


RELIGION    ON    FALSE    PRETENCES.  99 

increasing    the    productiveness    of   the    earth ;    and 
therefore   secondarily,  with   the   importance    of   im- 
proving man  as  the  producing  instrument;  trusting 
to  a  preternatural  development  of  the  physical  and 
rational  faculties,  to  supply  some  adequate  counter- 
feit of  moral  order,  that  may  look  the   same  from 
outside  the  heart ;   transferring  to  personal  interest 
the  venerated  dress   and  badges  of  duty,  but  really 
disowning  any  law  higher  than  the  collective  forces 
of  self-will ;  loosening  any  particular  ties  with  which 
the  feelings  of  mankind  have  connected   a  peculiar 
sacredness  ;  and  suppressing,  as  an  unmeaning  weak- 
ness, any  sentiment  above  that  of  obtuse  submission, 
in  case  of  accident,  to  the  operation  of  crushing  and 
fracture    by   the    disordered    mechanism    of  nature. 
And  once  at  least   there  has  been  a    CHRIST  ;   not 
seeking  to  thrust  up  human  nature  from  below,  but 
to  raise  it  from  above ;  knowing  that  its  earth  could 
produce  nothing,  except  for  its  pure  and  spreading 
heaven ;  and  so,  coming  down  upon  it,  as  an  angel 
soul  from  the  highest  regions  of  the  spirit ;  speaking 
seldom  to  it  of  its  happiness,  constantly  of  its  holi- 
ness ;  dwelling  little  on  the  arrangements,  and  much 
on  the  responsibilities,  of  life;  pitying  its  woes,  as  it 
pities  them  itself  in   moments  of  truest  aspiration, 
not  with  mere  nervous  sympathy,  but  with  godlike 
and  healing  mercy ;  assuming  its  place  in  the  midst 
of  God,  and  on  the  surface  of  eternity,  and  from  this 
sublime  position,  as  a  base,  computing  its  obligations 
and  uttering  oracles  of  its  destiny.     Which  now  of 
these  three,  do  you  think,  is  truly  neighbor  to  our 
poor   nature,  wounded    and   bleeding   by  the  way? 
Which  of  them   has  really  tended  and  restored   it 
from  being  half  dead?     It  is  impossible  to  deny  to 


100         KELIGION  ON  FALSE  PBETENCES. 

even  the  least  worthy  of  them  the  praise  of  rendering 
service  to  man,  —  but  can  we  say  of  them  all  that 
there  is  a  service  of  God  ?  Are  all  felt  to  be  equally 
noble  and  venerable?  Or  do  we  measure  our  rev- 
erence for  them  by  the  scale  and  service  of  their 
operation  ?  Is  it  not  rather  the  different  principle 
which  is  at  the  root  of  each,  that  determines  the  sen- 
timent we  direct  towards  them  ? 

No  one,  I  believe,  sincerely  feels  that  the  simply 
humane  and  prosaic  view  of  life  and  men,  such  as  a 
naturalist  or  a  statist  might  take,  is  as  true  and  high 
a  source  of  benevolent  action,  as  the  reverential  and 
divine,  that  commences  with  the  spiritual  relations, 
and  thence  descends  to  the  economy  of  the  outward 
lot.  If  then  the  maxim,  that  the  service  of  men  is 
the  truest  service  of  God,  is  adduced  to  excuse  the 
indifference  of  many  an  amiable  heart  to  the  great 
truths  of  faith,  and  to  palliate  the  defects  of  a  merely 
ethical  benevolence;  if  it  is  the  plea  of  social  kind- 
ness to  be  let  alone  on  the  subject  of  diviner  obliga- 
tions, it  cannot  be  admitted.  But  as  self-justification 
is  seldom  deficient  in  ingenuity,  there  is  a  sense  in 
which  this  aphorism  is  unquestionably  true ;  in 
which,  indeed,  it  does  but  contain  the  sentiment  of 
the  apostle ;  '  he  that  loveth  not  his  brother  whom 
he  hath  seen,  how  can  he  love  God  whom  he  hath 
not  seen?'  From  the  love  of  man  we  do  not  neces- 
sarily rise  into  the  love  of  God ;  but  from  any  true 
love  of  God,  we  inevitably  descend  into  the  love  of 
man, —  his  child,  his  image,  the  object  of  his  bene- 
diction, and  the  sharer  of  his  immortality.  Nor  is 
this  maxim  without  an  important  application  to  our 
moral  estimates  of  others,  whose  acts  alone  are  ex- 
posed to  view,  and  of  whose  secret  motives  and 


BELIGION    ON    FALSE    PBETEXCES.  101 

affections  we  cannot  take  cognizance.  Wherever 
we  see  in  our  fellow-men  the  outward  life  which 
might  be  the  possible  fruit  of  religious  principle, 
though  perhaps  explicable  as  some  inferior  growth, 
we  have  certainly  no  right  to  deny  the  existence  of 
the  nobler  root ;  but  must  accept  their  service  of  man 
as  presumption  of  their  fidelity  to  God.  I  only 
protest  against  that  self-flattery,  which  permits  our 
good-nature  towards  earth  to  lull  to  sleep  our  aspira- 
tions to  heaven. 

Another  spurious  form  of  religion  is  discerned 
among  those  who  regard  it  as  an  indispensable  orna- 
ment of  character;  who  speak  much  of  the  incom- 
pleteness of  human  nature  without  it;  and  plead  the 
claims  of  piety  on  the  ground,  that  it  is  an  offence 
against  mental  symmetry  to  be  without  it.  The 
most  palpable  exhibition  of  this  imitation  of  faith 
is  found  among  those  who,  after  craniological  re- 
search, conceive  that  they  have  discovered  a  certain 
cerebral  provision  for  a  god  ;  and  who  therefore  con- 
clude that  the  culture  of  devotion  is  necessary  to 
physiological  consistency.  They  speak  at  large  of 
man's  need  of  a  religion,  of  his  unsatisfied  wants 
without  it ;  of  the  grace  which  it  adds  to  his  moral 
stature,  the  dignity  it  gives  to  his  affections,  the 
power  which  it  administers  to  his  will;  and  then 
they  issue  orders  to  their  ingenuity  to  devise  a 
religion  suitable  to  this  discovered  want,  precisely 
adapted  to  the  cravings  of  this  appetite.  Alas!  how- 
ever, this  is  not  the  way  in  which  a  religion  can  be 
found  ;  it  cannot  thus  by  any  skill  be  carved  and 
constructed  according  to  measurements  taken  on 
purpose  from  our  nature.  It  is  easy  indeed  to  im- 
agine and  invent  a  faith,  seemingly  just  fitted  to  our 
9« 


102  BELIGION    ON    FALSE    PRETENCES. 

wants ;  but  then  comes  the  question,  How  are  we  to 
get  it  believed?     And  here,  it  is  to  be  feared,  is  the 
failure  of  this  school;  they  seem  to  have  more  faith 
in  the  religiousness  of  man,  than  in  the  reality  of 
God.     The  same  danger  attends  the  idea,  wherever 
found,  of  aiming  constantly  at  our  own  self-perfec- 
tion, and,  under  the  influence  of  this  aim,  striving  to 
put  the  last  and  saintly  finish  of  a  pure  devotion  to 
our  character.     Surely  there  is  something  unsound 
and  morbid  in  thus  resolving  the  whole  idea  of  ob- 
ligation and  truth  into  that  of  beauty.     As  long  as 
we  are  but  painting  our  own  ideal  portrait,  we  can 
produce  no  living  and  substantial  goodness,  but  a 
mere  canvas  thing  of  surface  dimension  only.     Hu- 
man   character   and  life   are   something   more   than 
mere  matters  of  taste  and  propriety;  and  will  attain 
to  nothing   excellent   till  they  are  regarded   in   the 
spirit  of  an  earnest  reality.     Devotion  can  find   no 
firm  foundation  in  the  notion  of  its  relative  fitness 
to  us,  but  must  feel  its  foot  on  the  absolute  truth  of 
its  glorious  and  sublime  objects.     All  else  is  abhor- 
rent from  the  pure  simplicity  of  faith,  and  tends  only 
to  foster  an  indifference  to  truth,  and  an  affectation 
of  religion.     God,  refusing  to  be  discerned  through 
the  impure  eye  of  expediency,  reveals  himself  only  to 
out  inward  intuitions  of  conscience.     The  piety  that 
loves  him  will  recognize  no  third  thing  between  yea 
and  no.     To  assume  his  reality,  because  the  hypoth- 
esis seems  to  open  the  best  training  school  for  our 
human  nature ;  to  treat  the  highest  of  all  things  as 
true,  only  because  we  want  it  to  be  true,  and  shall  be 
the  better  for  it  if  it  is,  —  what  is  this  but,  under 
decent  disguise,  the  French  philosopher's  character- 
istic exclamation, '  If  there  were  not  a  God,  we  should 


RELIGION     ON    FALSE    PRETENCES.  103 

have  to  invent  one.'  To  an  earnest  mind  this  air  of 
protection  and  appropriation  towards  things  divine 
and  holy  is  unspeakably  offensive.  It  is  for  God 
to  rule  and  guard  our  conscience,  not  for  our  con- 
science to  take  care  of  God.  And  to  every  pure 
submissive  mind  his  voice  within  is  heard  rebuking 
this  presumptuous  spirit,  and  repeating  the  words  of 
Christ,  '  Ye  have  not  chosen  me,  but  I  have  chosen 
you.' 


VIII. 

MAMMON-WORSHIP. 

MATTHEW  vi.  28. 

CONSIDER  THE  LILIES  OF  THE  FIELD,  HOW  THEY  GROW  ;  THET  TOIL 
NOT,  NEITHER  DO  THET  SPIN  ;  AND  TET  I  SAY  UNTO  YOU,  THAT 
SOLOMON,  IN  ALL  HIS  GLORY,  WAS  NOT  ARRAYED  LIKE  ONE  OF 
THESE. 

IN  no  time  or  country  has  Christianity  ever  been 
exhibited  in  its  simple  integrity.  The  soul  of  its 
author  was  the  only  pure  and  perfect  expression  of 
its  spirit ;  it  was  at  once  the  creator  and  the  sole 
director  of  his  mind ;  born  within  that  palace  to  be 
its  Lord.  In  every  other  instance  Christianity  has 
been  only  one  out  of  many  influences  concerned  in 
forming  the  character  of  its  professors ;  and  they 
have  given  it  various  shapes,  according  to  the  cli- 
mate, the  society,  the  occupations  in  which  they  have 
lived.  The  prejudices  and  passions  of  every  com- 
munity, the  inevitable  growth  of  its  position,  have 
weakened  its  religion  and  morality  in  some  points, 
and  strengthened  them  in  others.  So  that  all  par- 
ticular Christianities  are  distortions  of  the  great 
original ;  like  paintings  placed  in  a  false  light ;  or 
rather  like  those  grotesque  images  seen  in  the  concave 
surfaces  of  things,  which,  lengthen  or  shorten  as  they 
may,  spoil  the  beauty  that  depends  upon  proportion. 
The  student  will  find  in  his  religion  the  nutriment  of 
divinest  speculation — the  tenets  of  a  sublime  phi- 
losophy in  which  heaven  resolves  the  great  problems 
of  duty,  fate  and  futurity ;  and  when  his  genius  soars 


105 

to  the  highest  heaven  of  invention,  he  feels  that  he 
is  borne  upon  his  faith,  as  on  eagles'  wings.  The 
patriot,  cast  on  evil  times,  without  a  glimpse  of  these 
contemplative  subtleties,  sees  in  it  the  law  of  liberty ; 
hears  in  it  a  clear  call,  as  from  the  trump  of  God,  to 
vindicate  the  rights  of  the  oppressed ;  he  delights  to 
read  how  Christ  provoked  bigots  to  gnash  their  teeth 
with  rage,  and  Paul  proclaimed  that  of  one  blood 
were  all  nations  made.  The  peasant  lays  to  heart 
its  mercy  to  the  pure,  and  its  promise  to  the  good. 
The  merchant  takes  it  as  the  root  of  uprightness  ; 
the  artist  visits  it  as  the  source  of  moral  beauty  the 
most  divine.  The  system  is  edited  anew  in  the  rnind 
of  every  class. 

We  live  in  a  country  whose  national  character  is 
very  marked,  and  on  whose  people  certain  prevailing 
habits  and  employments  are  imposed  by  a  peculiar 
soil,  a  Northern  climate,  and  insular  position.  Various 
causes,  both  social  and  political,  are  filling  England 
more  and  more  with  a  manufacturing  and  mercantile 
population.  The  fact,  taken  in  all  its  connections,  is 
by  no  means  to  be  deplored ;  and  in  various  ways 
comprises  in  it  auguries  of  vast  good.  But  in  the 
meanwhile  it  is  attended  with  this  particular  result ; 
that  the  spirit  of  gain  is  ascendant  over  every  other 
passion  and  pursuit  by  which  men  can  be  occupied. 
Neither  pleasure,  nor  art,  nor  glory,  can  beguile  our 
people  from  their  profits.  War  was  their  madness 
once ;  but  the  temple  of  Moloch  is  deserted,  and 
morning  and  evening  the  gates  of  Mammon  are 
thronged  now.  There  is  the  idol  from  whose  seduc- 
tions our  Christianity  has  most  to  fear.  Without 
indulging  in  any  sentimental  declamation  against 
the  pursuit  and  influence  of  wealth,  we  may  be  per- 


106  MAMMON-WORSHIP. 

mitted  to  feel,  that  this  is  the  quarter  from  which, 
specifically,  our  moral  and  religious  sentiments  ate 
most  in  danger  of  being  vitiated.  The  habits  which 
produce  the  danger  may  be  inevitable,  forced  upon 
us  by  a  hard  social  necessity ;  still  in  bare  self-knowl- 
edge there  is  self-protection.  For,  the  danger  of  a 
vice  is  not  like  the  danger  of  a  pestilence,  in  which 
the  most  unconscious  are  the  most  safe ;  and  the 
fear  of  contagion,  which,  in  the  one  case,  absorbs  the 
poison  into  the  veins  of  the  body,  repulses  in  the 
other  the  temptation  from  the  mind. 

The  excess,  to  which  this  master-passion  is  carried, 
perverts  our  just  and  natural  estimate  of  happiness. 
It  cannot  be  otherwise,  when  that  which  is  but  a 
means  is  elevated  into  the  greatest  of  ends ;  when 
that  which  gives  command  over  some  physical  com- 
forts becomes  the  object  of  intenser  desire  than  all 
blessings  intellectual  and  moral,  and  we  live  to  get 
rich,  instead  of  getting  rich  that  we  may  live.  The 
mere  lapse  of  years  is  not  life ;  to  eat  and  drink  and 
sleep ;  to  be  exposed  to  the  darkness  and  the  light ; 
to  pace  round  in  the  mill  of  habit,  and  turn  the 
wheel  of  wealth ;  to  make  reason  our  book-keeper, 
and  turn  thought  into  an  implement  of  trade,  —  this 
is  not  life.  In  all  this,  but  a  poor  fraction  of  the 
consciousness  of  humanity  is  awakened;  and  the 
sanctities  still  slumber  which  make  it  most  worth 
while  to  be.  Knowledge,  truth,  love,  beauty,  good- 
ness, faith,  alone  give  vitality  to  the  mechanism  of 
existence;  the  laugh  of  mirth  that  vibrates  through 
the  heart ;  the  tears  that  freshen  the  dry  wastes  with- 
in; the  music  that  brings  childhood  back;  the  prayer 
that  calls  the  future  near ;  the  doubt  which  makes  us 
meditate ;  the  death  which  startles  us  with  mystery  ; 


MAMMON-WOESHIP.  107 

the  hardship  that  forces  us  to  struggle;  the  anxiety 
that  ends  in  trust,  —  are  the  true  nourishment  of  our 
natural  being.  But  these  things,  which  penetrates  to 
the  very  core  and  marrow  of  existence,  the  votaries  of 
riches  are  apt  to  fly;  they  like  not  any  thing  that 
touches  the  central  and  immortal  consciousness ;  they 
hurry  away  from  occasions  of  sympathy  into  the  snug 
retreat  of  self;  escape  from  life  into  the  pretended 
cares  for  a  livelihood ;  and  die  at  length  busy  as  ever 
in  preparing  the  means  of  living. 

With  a  large  and,  I  fear,  predominant  class  among 
us,  it  is  scarcely  an  exaggeration  to  say,  that  money 
'measureth  all  things,'  and  is  more  an  object  of  am- 
bition than  any  of  the  ends  to  which  it  affects  to  be 
subservient.  It  is  the  one  standard  of  value,  which 
gives  estimation  to  the  vilest  things  that  have  it,  and 
leaves  in  contempt  the  best  that  are  without  it.  It  is 
set  up  as  the  measure  of  knowledge;  for  is  it  not 
notorious  that  no  intellectual  attainments  receive  a 
just  appreciation,  but  those  which  may  be  converted 
into  gold;  that  this  is  the  rule  by  which,  almost 
exclusively,  parents  compute  the  worth  of  their  chil- 
dren's education,  and  determine  its  character  and 
extent?  It  is  not  enough  that  the  understanding 
burns  with  generous  curiosity  for  the  conquest  of 
some  new  science,  or  the  fancy  for  some  new  accom- 
plishment; it  is  not  enough  that  a  study  is  needed  to 
brace  the  faculties  with  health,  or  illumine  the  im- 
agination with  beauty,  or  agitate  the  heart  with  high 
sympathies;  'but  what  is  the  use  of  it?'  is  the  ques- 
tion still  asked,  —  as  if  it  were  not  use  enough, 
instead  of  a  trader  to  make  a  man.  Research  and 
speculation  which  do  not  visibly  tend  to  the  produc- 
tion of  wealth  are  regarded  by  all,  except  the  classes 


108  MAMMON-WORSHIP. 

engaged  in  their  pursuit,  as  the  dignified  frivolities  of 
whimsical  men  ;  and  though  they  may  bear  the  torch 
into  the  darkness  of  antiquity,  or  open  some  unex- 
plored domain  of  nature,  they  must  not  expect  more 
than  a  cold  tolerance.  Still  worse;  money  with  us  is 
the  measure  of  morality ;  for  those  parts  and  attributes 
of  virtue  are  in  primary  esteem  which  are  conducive 
to  worldly  aggrandizement;  and  it  is  easy  to  perceive 
that  no  others  are  objects  of  earnest  and  hearty  am- 
bition. Industry  and  regularity,  and  a  certain  easy 
amount  of  pecuniary  probity,  being  indispensable 
instruments  of  prosperity,  the  great  moral  forces  of 
trade,  are  in  no  country  held  in  higher  worth ;  but 
the  amenities  which  spread  a  grace,  over  the  harsher 
features  of  life,  the  clear  veracity  that  knows  truth 
and  profit  to  be  incommensurable  things,  and  the 
generous  affections  whose  coin  is  in  sympathy  as 
well  as  gold,  are  the  objects  of  but  slight  care,  and 
slighter  culture.  The  current  ideas  of  human  nature 
and  character  are  graduated  by  the  same  rule,  and 
err  on  the  side,  not  of  generosity,  but  of  prudence. 
The  experienced  are  habitually  anxious  to  give  the 
young  such  an  estimate  of  mankind,  as  may  prove, 
not  the  most  true,  but  the  most  profitable,  —  an 
estimate  so  depressed  into  caution  as  to  be  altogether 
below  justice.  To  escape  one  or  two  possible  rogues, 
we  must  suppose  nobody  true;  for  the  sake  of  pe- 
cuniary safety,  we  must  submit  to  the  moral  wretch- 
edness of  universal  distrust,  and  blacken  the  great 
human  heart  for  our  private  ease ;  as  if  it  were  not 
better  to  run  the  risk  of  ruin,  than  grow  familiar  with 
so  vast  a  lie  ;  happier  to  be  bankrupt  in  wealth  than  in 
the  humanities.  But  alas!  with  us  money  is  the 
measure  of  all  utility;  it  is  this  which  constitutes  the 


MAMMOX-AVOESHIP.  109 

real  though  disguised  distinction  between  the  English 
notions  of  theory  and  practice.  A  truth  may  be  in 
the  highest  degree  grand  and  important,  may  relieve 
many  a  cold  and  heavy  doubt,  and  open  many  a  fair 
and  brilliant  vision;  but  unless  it  has  some  reference 
to  money,  it  is  pronounced  a  mere  theory.  A  social 
improvement  may  be  suggested,  which  promises  to 
remove  some  absurd  anomaly,  to  assert  some  com- 
prehensive principle,  or  annihilate  some  sufferings  of 
mere  feeling;  but  becanse  it  has  no  direct  relation  to 
the  mechanism  of  property,  it  is  set  aside  as  not 
practical.  By  an  unnatural  abuse  of  terms,  practical 
men  do  not  mean  with  us,  those  who  study  the  bear- 
ing of  things  on  human  life  in  its  widest  comprehen- 
sion, but  men  who  value  everything  by  its  effect 
upon  the  purse. 

In  obedience  to  the  same  dominant  passion,  vast 
numbers  spend  their  term  of  mortal  service  in  restless 
and  uneasy  competition,  in  childish  struggles  for  a 
higher  place  in  the  roll  of  opulence  or  fashion,  in 
jealousies  that  gnaw  to  the  very  heart  of  luxury,  in 
ambition  that  spoils  the  present  splendor  by  the 
shadow  of  some  new  want.  Happy  they  of  simpler 
feelings,  who  have  taken  counsel  of  a  pure  nature 
about  the  economy  of  good;  who  know  from  what 
slight  elements  the  hand  of  taste  can  weave  the 
colors  into  the  web  of  life,  and  from  what  familiar 
memories  the  heart  draws  the  song  of  cheerfulness  as 
the  work  proceeds ;  who  find  no  true  pleasure  marred 
because  it  is  plebeian,  nor  any  indulgence  needful 
because  decreed  by  custom ;  who  discern  how  little 
the  palace  can  add  to  the  sincere  joy  of  a  loving  and 
a  Christian  home,  and  feel  that  nature  dwells  at  the 
centre  after  all;  who  have  the  firmness  to  retire  to 
10 


110  MAMMON- WORSHIP. 

that  inner  region,  and  embrace  the  toils  of  reason,  the 
labors  of  sympathy,  the  strife  of  conscience,  the  ex- 
haustless  ambition  of  Duty,  as  Heaven's  own  way 
to  combine  the  divinest  activity  with  the  profoundest 
repose. 

The  prevalent  occupations  of  the  community  in 
which  we  live  have  a  tendency  to  pervert  our  moral 
sentiments  and  social  affections,  no  less  than  our 
estimates  of  happiness.  In  a  society  so  engrossed 
with  the  ideas  connected  with  property,  so  eternally 
dwelling  on  the  distinction  of  meum  and  tuum,  men 
naturally  learn  to  think  and  speak  of  all  things  in  the 
language  belonging  to  this  relation;  to  use  it  as  an 
illustration  of  matters  less  familiar  to  them,  and 
apply  its  imagery  and  analogies  to  subjects  of  a 
totally  different  character.  Over  their  property  the 
authority  of  law  gives  them  absolute  right  and  con- 
trol; no  man  may  touch  it  with  his  ringer,  or  call 
them  to  account  for  its  disposal.  I  need  not  stop  to 
acknowledge,  what  is  too  plain  for  any  one  to  doubt, 
that  this  sanctity  of  property  from  invasion  is,  to  any 
society,  the  very  cement  of  its  civilization.  Yet  there 
is  an  unquestionable  danger  of  giving  this  notion  of 
irresponsible  possession  an  application  beyond  its 
proper  range ;  of  permitting  the  sense  of  legal  right  to 
creep  insensibly  into  the  domain  of  moral  obligation, 
and  spread  there  the  feeling  of  personal  self-will,  and 
set  up  the  caprices  of  inclination  for  the  deliberations 
of  duty.  Men  are  exceedingly  apt  to  imagine,  that 
nothing  can  be  seriously  wrong;  which  they  have  a 
right  to  do;  to  forget  that  the  license  which  is  al- 
lowed by  law,  may  be  sternly  prohibited  by  morality. 
How  little  concern  does  any  wise  and  conscientious 
principle  appear  to  have  with  the  expenditure  of  pri- 


MAMMON-WORSHIP.  Ill 

vate  revenue,  especially  where  that  revenue  is  the 
largest !  How  despotically  there  do  mere  whim  and 
chance  suggestion  appear  to  reign !  How  wastefully 
are  the  elements  of  human  enjoyment  squandered  in 
pernicious  luxuries,  or  dissipated  in  random  experi- 
ments of  benevolence,  of  which  a  little  knowledge 
beforehand  might  have  taught  the  result  just  as  well 
as  the  failure  afterwards !  And  if  ever  a  gentle  re- 
monstrance is  insinuated,  how  instantly  does  the 
vulgar  and  ignorant  feeling  leap  forth,  '  and  may  I  not 
do  what  I  like  with  my  own  ?  '  No,  you  may  not, 
unless  your  liking  and  your  duty  are  in  happy  ac- 
cordance. Morally  you  are  as  much  bound  to  dis- 
tribute your  own  wealth  wisely,  as  to  abstain  from 
touching  another  man's;  bound  by  the  very  same 
fundamental  reasons,  which  forbid  the  privation  of 
human  enjoyment  no  less  than  the  creation  of  human, 
misery.  As  large  a  portion  of  well-being  may  be 
sacrificed  by  an  act  of  wilful  extravagance,  as  by  the 
commission  of  a  dishonesty ;  and  were  it  of  a  nature 
to  be  definable  by  law,  would  merit  as  severe  a 
punishment.  Shall  any  thing  then  deter  us  from 
saying  that  such  self-indulgence  is  a  thief? 

But  the  feelings  which  are  entertained  towards 
property,  —  the  feelings  of  absolute  and  irresponsible 
control,  —  are  very  apt  to  extend  to  whatever  it  can 
purchase  and  procure;  and  unhappily,  to  the  services  of 
those  human  beings  who  yield  us  their  labor  for  hire. 
There  is  nothing  over  which  a  man  exercises  such 
uncontrolled  power  as  his  purse ;  and  (where  no  prin- 
ciple of  justice  and  benevolence  intervenes)  but  one 
remove  from  this  despotism,  are  placed  his  depend- 
ants. In  them,  the  right  of  every  human  being,  to 
be  appreciated  according  to  his  moral  worth,  is  for- 


112  MAMMON-WORSHIP. 

gotten;  and  the  rule  by  which  they  are  judged  is  their 
mechanical  use  to  the  master,  not  their  excellence  in 
themselves.  That  they  are  responsible  agents  (ex- 
cept to  their  employers),  that  they  have  an  intelligence 
that  may  be  the  receptacle  of  truth,  hearts  that  may 
shelter  gentle  sympathies,  and  a  work  of  duty  to 
carry  on  beneath  the  eye  of  God,  that  their  bodies 
are  of  the  same  clay  and  their  life  constructed  of  the 
same  vicissitudes  as  ours,  —  are  thoughts  that  too 
seldom  occur  to  lead  us  to  consult  their  feelings,  to 
allow  for  their  temptations,  to  respect  their  conscience 
and  improvement,  as  would  become  a  fraternal  and  a 
Christian  heart.  How  hardly  are  they  judged !  By 
how  much  more  rigid  a  rule  than  that  which  we 
apply  to  our  friends  or  to  ourselves !  What  order, 
what  punctuality,  what  untiring  industry,  what 
equanimity  of  temper,  what  abstinent  integrity,  is 
imperiously  and  mercilessly  demanded  by  many  a 
master,  lax,  and  lazy,  and  passionate  himself!  O! 
with  what  biting  indignation  have  I  seen  those  most 
wretched  of  educated  beings,  the  governess  in  a 
family  or  the  usher  in  a  school,  worked  to  the  bone 
without  the  help  of  a  sympathy,  moving  in  perpetual 
rotation,  with  no  feeling  but  of  the  daily  whirl,  and  of 
incessant  friction  upon  all  that  is  most  tender  in  their 
nature ;  expected  to  have  all  perfections,  intellectual 
and  moral,  and  to  dispense  with  the  respect  which 
is  their  natural  due ;  copiously  blamed  for  what  is 
wrong,  but  scantily  praised  for  what  is  right ;  paid, 
but  never  cheered ;  and  when  worn  threadbare  at  last, 
put  away  as  one  of  the  cast-off  shreds  of  society,  that 
only  deforms  the  house  filled  with  purple  and  fine 
linen.  This  is  the  consequence  of  that  state  of  things 
in  which  (to  use  the  words  of  a  Church  Dignitary,  who 


MAMMON-WORSHIP.  113 

could  find  it  in  his  heart  to  write  them  without  a 
syllable  of  regret  or  rebuke)  '  poverty  is  infamous ; ' 
and  in  which  knowledge  and  virtue  weigh  nothing 
against  gold.  Let  the  children  of  labor  remember, 
that  they  are  of  the  class  which  he  of  Nazareth  digni- 
fied; that,  peradventure,  in  his  youthful  days  of 
mechanic  toil,  he  too  was  looked  on  by  the  coarse 
eye  of  sheer  power ;  and  yet  nurtured,  amid  indignities 
and  neglect,  the  spirit  that  made  him  divinely  wise. 

The  despotic  temper  which  is  apt  to  be  engen- 
dered by  wealth  in  one  direction,  is  naturally  con- 
nected with  servility  in  the  opposite.  For  the  very 
same  reason  that  we  regard  those  who  are  beneath 
us  almost  as  if  they  were  our  property,  we  must 
regard  ourselves  almost  as  if  we  were  the  property 
of  those  above  us.  There  is  little,  I  fear,  that  is 
intellectual  or  moral  in  that  sort  of  independence 
which  is  the  proverbial  characteristic  of  our  coun- 
trymen ;  it  consists  either  in  mere  churlishness  of 
manner,  or  in  overbearing  tyranny  to  those  of  equal 
or  lower  grade.  It  would  be  inconsistent  not  to 
yield  that  respect  to  the  purse  in  others,  which  men 
are  fond  of  claiming  for  it  in  themselves ;  and  ac- 
cordingly it  is  to  be  feared  that  in  few  civilized 
countries  is  there  so  much  sycophancy  as  in  this; 
so  many  creatures  ready  to  crawl  round  a  heap  of 
gold  ;  so  many  insignificant  shoals  gleaming  around 
every  great  ship  that  rides  over  the  surface  of  society. 
It  is  a  grievous  evil  arising  hence,  that  the  judgments 
and  moral  feelings  of  society  lose  their  clear-sighted- 
ness and  power  ;  that  the  same  rules  are  not  applied 
to  the  estimate  of  rich  and  poor ;  that  there  is  a  rank 
which  almost  enjoys  immunity  from  the  verdict  of 
a  just  public  sentiment,  where  the  most  ordinary 
10* 


114  MAMMON-WOKSHIP. 

qualities  receive  a  mischievous  adulation,  and  even 
grave  sins  are  judged  lightly  or  not  at  all.     But  it  is 
a  more  grievous  ill  that  the  witchery  thus   strikes 
with   a  foul  blight  the  true  manhood  of  the  children 
of  God  ;  —  the  manhood,  not  of  limbs  or  life,  but  of 
a  spirit  free  and  pure  ;  —  of  an  understanding  open 
to  all  truth,  and  venerating  it  too  deeply  to  love  it 
except  for  itself,  or  barter  it  for  honor  or  for  gold  ;  of 
a  heart  enthralled  by  no  conventionalisms,  bound  by 
no  frosts  of  custom,  but  the  perennial  fountain  of  all 
pure  humanities;  of  a  will  at  the  mercy  of  no  tyrant 
without  and    no   passion   within ;    of    a   conscience 
erect  under  all  the  pressure  of  circumstances,  and 
ruled  by  no  power  inferior  to  the  everlasting  law  of 
Duty ;  of  affections  gentle  enough  for  the  humblest 
sorrows  of  earth,  lofty  enough  for  the  aspirings  of  the 
skies.     In  such  manhood,  full  of  devout  strength  and 
open  love,  let  every  one  that  owns  a  soul  see  that  he 
stands  fast ;  in  its  spirit,  at  once  humane  and  heav- 
enly, do  the  work,  accept  the  good,  and  bear  the 
burdens  of  his  life.     Its  healthful  power  will  reveal 
the  sickness  of  our  selfishness ;  and  recall  us  from 
the  poisonous  level   of  our  luxuries  and  vanities  to 
the  reviving  breath  and  the  mountain  heights  of  God. 
There  could  be  no  deliverer  more  true  than  he  who 
should  thus  emancipate  himself  and  us.     O!  blessed 
are  they  who,  for  the  peace  and  ornament  of  life,  dare 
to  rely,  not  on  the  glories  which  Solomon  affected,  but 
on  those  which  Jesus  loved ;  —  glories  which  even 
God  may  behold  with  complacency,  —  nay,  in  which 
he  shines  himself ;  glories  of  nature,  richer  than  of 
man's  device  ;  genuine  graces,  resembling  the  inimit- 
able beauties  of  the  lilies  of  the  field,  painted  with  the 
hues  of  heaven,  while  bending  over  the  soil  of  earth. 


IX. 

THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD  WITHIN  US. 

PART   I. 
MATTHEW  ir.  17. 

FROM   THAT   TIME  JESUS   BEGAN   TO   PREACH,   AND   TO    SAT,    REPENT  ; 
FOR   THE   KINGDOM    OF    HEAVEN   IS   AT   HAND. 

BY  the  kingdom  of  Heaven  was  meant  reforma- 
tion upon  earth.  Whatever  difficulties  there  may  be 
in  filling  up  the  precise  picture  which  the  phrase 
would  call  up  before  the  mind  of  a  Jewish  audience, 
it  was  unquestionably  the*  Hebrew  formula  for  the 
expected  golden  age,  and  was  the  popular  symbol  to 
denote  perfected  society;  the  final  ascendency  of 
truth,  justice,  and  peace  ;  the  expulsion  of  misery 
and  wrong ;  the  eternal  reign  of  all  that  is  divine 
over  the  world.  This  theocratic  revolution  was 
expected  speedily,  when  the  words  of  the  text  were 
uttered.  On  the  supposed  eve  of  such  a  change, 
which  would  itself  bring  remedies  for  every  imagin- 
able ill,  physical  and  moral,  all  earnest  efforts  at 
social  amelioration  might  appear  to  be  superseded ; 
the  nearer  the  crisis  of  restoration,  the  shorter  would 
be  the  triumphs  of  oppression,  and  the  feebler 
the  mischiefs  of  sin :  nay.  if  corruption  ripens  for 
judgment,  a  more  vehement  outblaze  of  human 
crime  might  even  be  welcomed  by  some,  as  likely 


116  THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    US. 

to  hasten  the  interposition  which  was  to  quench  and 
to  regenerate.  The  appropriate  lesson  of  the  hour 
might  be  thought  to  be  one  of  passive  watchfulness ; 
to  lie  in  wait  for  the  hoped-for  redemption ;  to  relax 
even  the  accustomed  energies  of  life  and  duty,  as  on 
a  world  grown  old  ;  and,  in  the  words  of  one  writing 
under  the  influence  of  this  very  expectation,  to  let 
'  him  that  is  unjust,  be  unjust  still;  him  that  is  filthy, 
be  filthy  still ;  him  that  is  righteous,  be  righteous 
still ;  him  that  is  holy,  be  holy  still ;  for  the  time  is 
at  hand.' 

Instead  of  this,  however,  the  great  prophet  of  the 
hour  draws  the  opposite  inference ;  and  utters  the 
exhortation  short  and  sharp,  'Repent!'  A  life  of 
worldly  acquiescence,  of  selfish  habit,  of  unloving 
and  barren  ease,  will  not  do,  he  conceives,  for  the 
kingdom  of  Heaven  ;  which,  be  it  what  it  may,  is 
no  system  of  mechanism  for  forcing  men  to  be  wise 
and  good  without  any  trouble,  but  a  social  state 
accruing  from  wisdom  and  excellence  previously 
formed  ;  not  a  scene  from  which  souls  acquire  sanc- 
tity, but  one  to  which  they  give  it.  Personal  repent- 
ance, the  transference  of  the  life  from  conventional- 
ism to  conviction,  the  kindling  of  pure  and  productive 
affections,  must  precede  and  usher  in  the  reign  of 
God  upon  the  earth;  men  must  truly  venerate  the 
Deity  within  them,  and  he  will  not  be  slow  to  de- 
scend with  his  peace  on  society  around  them.  The 
holy  and  divine  must  first  be  recognized  and  en- 
shrined in  the  individual  and  private  heart ;  and 
then  will  follow  its  wider  conquests  over  humanity. 
There  is  the  home  and  citadel  of  its  strength,  from 
which  it  sallies  forth  to  win  its  public  triumphs,  and 
establish  its  general  rule ;  there  the  centre  whence 


THE    KINGDOM     OF    GOD    WITHIN    US.  117 

its  influence  radiates,  till  it  embraces  and  penetrates 
even  the  outlying  margin  of  barbarism  and  sin. 

Christ,  then,  whose  voice  is  Christianity,  addresses 
himself  first  to  the  individual  conscience ;  indulging 
in  no  dreams  of  a  renovated  world  without,  till  he 
has  flung  his  appeal  to  the  man  within ;  looks  there 
for  the  creative  and  vital  forces,  which  are  to  make  all 
things  new.  He  speaks  to  his  hearers,  not  as  to  pas- 
sive creatures  who  might  look  about  them  for  some 
position  in  which  it  might  befall  them  to  be  good,  but 
as  to  beings  conscious  of  internal  power  to  strive  and 
win  the  excellence  they  love ;  to  grapple  athletically 
with  the  oppositions  of  circumstance ;  and  run  the 
appointed  race,  though  with  panting  breast  and 
bleeding  feet.  Herein,  I  conceive,  did  Christ  preach 
a  gospel  wholly  at  variance  with  the  prevailing 
temper  and  philosophy  of  our  times.  It  is  their 
tendency  not  to  excite  men  to  what  they  ought  to 
be,  but  to  manage  them  as  they  are.  The  age  has 
been  prolific  (like  many  of  its  predecessors)  in  inven- 
tions and  proposed  social  arrangements,  by  which  we 
may  sit  still  and  be  made  into  the  right  kind  of  men  ; 
which  will  render  duty  the  smoothest  thing  on  earth, 
by  warning  all  interfering  motives  off  the  spot,  and 
turn  the  Christian  race  into  a  stroll  upon  a  mossy 
lawn.  The  trust  and  boast  of  our  period  is  not  in  its 
individual  energy  and  virtue,  not  in  its  great  and 
good  minds,  but  in  its  external  civilization,  in  schemes 
of  social  and  political  improvement,  in  things  to  be 
done  for  us,  rather  than  by  us,  in  what  we  are  to  get, 
more  than  in  what  we  ought  to  be.  We  have  had 
systems  of  education,  which  were  to  mould  the  minds 
of  our  children  into  a  perfection  that  would  make 
experience  blush  ;  systems  of  self-culture,  to  nurse  our 


118  THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN     US. 

faculties  into  full  maturity;  systems  of  socialism  for 
mending  the  whole  world,  and  presenting  every  one 
with  a  virtuous  mind,  without  the  least  trouble  on 
his  part.  Even  those  who  escape  this  enthusiasm  of 
system  are  apt  to  place  an  extravagant  trust  in  sets 
of  outward  circumstances ;  and  dazzled  by  the  splen- 
did forms  which  modern  civilization  assumes,  to  con- 
ceive of  them  as  powers  in  themselves,  independently 
of  the  minds  that  fill  and  use  them.  Commerce,  me- 
chanical art,  and  more  reasonably,  but  still  with  some 
error,  the  school,  and  the  printing  press,  are  each  in  turn 
cited  as  in  themselves  securing  the  indefinite  progress 
of  nations  and  mankind.  It  would  be  absurd  to  doubt 
that  these  causes  operate  with  constant  and  bene- 
ficent power  on  the  mind  of  a  people ;  but  on  this 
very  account  an  exclusive  and  irrational  reliance  may 
be  placed  upon  them.  It  is  obvious  that  two  meth- 
ods exist,  of  aiming  at  human  improvement,  —  by 
adjusting  circumstances  without  and  by  addressing 
the  affections  within ;  by  creating  facilities  of  position, 
or  by  developing  force  of  character;  by  mechanism  or 
by  mind.  The  one  is  institutional  and  systematic, 
operating  on  a  large  scale,  reaching  individuals  cir- 
cuitously  and  at  last;  the  other  is  personal  and  moral, 
the  influence  of  soul  on  soul,  life  creating  life,  be- 
ginning in  the  regeneration  of  the  individual  and 
spreading  thence  over  communities;  the  one,  in  short, 
reforming  from  the  circumference  to  the  centre,  the 
other  from  the  centre  to  the  circumference.  And 
in  comparing  these,  it  is  not  difficult  to  show  the 
superior  triumphs  of  the  latter,  which  was  the  method 
of  Christ  and  Christianity.  Indeed  the  great  pecu- 
liarity of  the  Christian  view  of  life  is  to  be  found  in 
its  preference  of  the  inward  element  over  the  out- 


THE    KINGDOM     OF    GOD    WITHIN     US.  119 

ward ;  its  reliance  upon  the  least  showy  and  most 
deep  buried  portions  of  society  for  the  evangelizing 
of  the  world ;  and  still  more  upon  the  profoundest 
and  most  faintly  whispered  sentiments  of  the  soul  for 
the  regeneration  of  the  individual.  It  forbids  us  to 
say  '  lo,  here ! '  or  '  lo,  there ! '  and  assures  us  that '  the 
kingdom  of  God  is  within '  us. 

In  attributing  the  sa notification  and  moral  growth 
of  personal  character  to  an  agency  from  within, 
Christianity  is  surely  confirmed  by  experience.  Rare- 
ly do  these  blessed  changes  originate  in  any  peculi- 
arities of  the  individual's  lot,  visibly  favorable ;  —  else 
from  a  knowledge  of  his  circumstances,  we  should  be 
able  to  predict  the  history  of  his  mind.  Most  often 
they  arise,  without  any  marked  revolution  in  his  con- 
dition, from  secret  and  untraceable  workings  of  the 
soul,  from  native  forces  of  the  inner  man,  merely 
taking  from  external  circumstances  an  excuse  for 
breaking  into  energy,  —  an  excuse  which  a  thousand 
different  situations  would  have  supplied  as  well. 
Feeble  minds,  in  apology  for  their  puny  growth  or 
premature  decay  in  excellence,  complain  of  the  cli- 
mate in  which  God  has  planted  them ;  but  where 
there  is  any  vigor  of  life,  the  good  seed  will  not  wait 
to  burst,  till  it  be  removed  to  some  sunny  slope  or 
luxuriant  garden  of  the  Lord ;  give  it  but  a  lodgment 
on  the  rock  and  feed  it  with  the  melting  snow,  and  it 
will  start  a  forest  on  the  hills,  climbing  with  giant  feet, 
fast  as  the  seasons  can  make  steps.  Whatever  truth 
there  may  be  in  the  doctrine  of  circumstances,  when 
applied  on  a  large  scale  to  tribes  of  men,  —  however 
certain  it  may  be  that  national  character  is  changed 
by  the  insensible  influences  of  national  condition, — 
the  application  of  the  notion  by  individuals  to  their 


120  THE    KINGDOM    OF     GOD    WITHIN    ITS. 

own  case,  is  almost  always  fallacious ;  and  the  very 
fact  of  their  throwing  upon  their  fate  the  blame  of 
their  own  faithlessness  and  sin,  is  a  sure  symptom 
that  they  have  not  the  living  conscience  which  would 
turn  a  better  lot  into  a  better  life.     The  souls  that 
would  really  be  richer  in  duty  in  some  new  position, 
are  precisely  those  who  borrow  no  excuses  from  the 
old  one;  who  even  esteem  it  full  of  privileges,  plen- 
teous in  occasions  of  good,  frequent  in  divine  appeals, 
which  they  chide  their  graceless  and  unloving  temper 
for  not  heeding  more.     Wretched  and  barren  is  the 
discontent  that  quarrels  with  its  tools  instead  of  with 
its  skill;  and,  by  criticizing  Providence,  manages  to 
keep  up  complacency  with  self.     How  gentle  should 
we  be,  if  we  were  not  provoked ;  how  pious,  if  we 
were  not  busy ;  the  sick  would  be  patient,  only  he  is 
not  in  health ;  the  obscure  would  do  great  things,  only 
he  is  not  conspicuous!    Nay,  the  infatuation  besets  us 
more  closely  still,  and  tempts  us  to  expect  wonders 
from  some  altered  posture  of  our  affairs  totally  inade- 
quate to  their  production.     What  we  neglect  in  sum- 
mer is  to  be  done  in  winter;  what  present  interruptions 
persuade  us  to  forego  is  to  be  gloriously  achieved  at 
some  coming  period  of  golden  leisure,  when  confu- 
sion is   to  cease,  and   life  to  be  set  into  an  order 
unattainable   yet.     As   if  time   and   change,   which 
should  be  our  servants,  and  made  to  do  the  bidding 
of  our  conscience,  were  to  be  waited  on  by  our  servile 
will ;  as  if  the  pusillanimous  submission,  once  made, 
could  be  at  once  recalled.     No ;  as  the  captive  of  old 
was  carried  off  from  the  field  of  battle  to  the  field  of 
slavery,  the  vanquished   soul  becomes  temptation's 
serf,  and,  after  tears  and  repinings,  learns  to  be  cheer- 
ful at  the  toil  of  sin. 


THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    US.  121 

Once  let  a  man  insult  the  majesty  of  duty  by 
waiting  till  its  commands  shall  become  easy,  and  he 
must  be  disowned  as  an  outlaw  from  her  realm.  If 
he  calculates  on  some  happy  influences  that  are  to 
shape  him  into  something  nobler,  if  he  once  regards 
his  moral  nature,  not  as  an  authoritative  power  in- 
vested within  its  sphere  with  a  divine  omnipotence 
that  speaks  and  it  is  done,  but  as  passive  material  to 
be  worked  by  the  ingenuity  of  circumstances  into 
somewhat  that  is  good,  it  is  all  over  with  him ;  the 
ascendency  of  conscience  is  gone ;  collapse  and  ruin 
have  begun.  The  mind  has  fallen  into  contentment 
with  the  mere  conception,  —  the  feeble  and  far-off 
imagination  of  excellence;  confounds  the  look  of 
duty,  which  indeed  is  a  fair  vision,  with  the  strife  and 
effort,  the  weary  tension  of  resolve,  the  doubt,  the 
prayers,  the  tears,  which  may  bring  our  Christian 
manhood  to  exhaustion.  Pleasant  is  it  to  entertain 
the  picture  of  ourselves  in  some  future  scene,  plan- 
ning wisely,  feeling  nobly,  and  executing  with  the 
holy  triumph  of  the  will;  but  it  is  a  different  thing, 
—  not  in  the  green  avenues  of  the  future,  but  in  the 
hot  dust  of  the  present  moment, —  not  in  the  dramat- 
ic positions  of  the  fancy,  but  in  the  plain  prosaic  now, 
to  do  the  duty  that  waits  and  wants  us,  and  put  forth 
an  instant  and  reverential  hand  to  the  noonday  or 
the  evening  task.  It  is  a  vain  attempt,  —  that  of  the 
Epicurean  moralist;  to  '  endure  hardness'  is  the  need- 
ful condition  of  every  service,  and,  above  all,  for  the 
good  '  soldier  of  Christ;'  and  no  man  can  try  his 
utmost,  with  comfort  to  himself.  Without  great 
effort  was  nothing  worthy  ever  achieved ;  and  he  who 
is  never  conscious  of  any  strong  lift  within  the  mind, 
may  know  that  he  is  a  cumberer  of  the  ground. 
11 


122  THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    US. 

This  weak  reliance,  then,  on  outward  occasions  and 
influences  for  moral  improvement  is  always  ineffec- 
tual. And  it  is  the  constant  experience  of  those  who 
indulge  in  it,  that  to  postpone  the  season  is  to  per- 
petuate the  sin.  Instead  of  being  lifted  easily  by  the 
mechanism  of  new  and  more  powerful  motives  into 
a  higher  life,  the  most  overwhelming  vicissitudes 
sweep  over  them,  and  after  having  beat  upon  their 
defenceless  affections,  leave  them  where  they  were  : 
not  invigorated  into  effort,  but  simply  wasted  by 
passive  anguish;  —  just  as  danger,  which  may  but 
reveal  to  the  strong  his  strength,  will  sink  the  para- 
lytic into  death.  But  where,  on  the  contrary,  the 
soul  rests,  with  implicit  dependence,  not  on  outward 
opportunities,  but  on  inward  convictions,  on  some 
venerated  idea  of  right,  there  is  the  true  germ  of 
spiritual  life,  the  element  of  a  mighty  power.  This 
repose  upon  affectionate  conviction  is  the  true  Chris- 
tian faith  ;  and  he  that  has  it,  though  it  be  little  as  a 
grain  of  mustard-seed,  is  able  to  cast  the  mountain 
into  the  sea.  For  its  force  depends  not  on  the  great- 
ness or  rarity  of  the  thoughts  which  compose  it ;  the 
simplest  faith,  be  it  only  deep  and  trustful,  the  very 
smallest  idea  of  a  mission  in  life  assigned  by  God, 
be  it  only  lovingly  and  clearly  seen,  '  lifteth  the  poor 
out  of  the  dust,'  and  '  to  them  that  have  no  might 
increaseth  strength.'  As  of  old  it  banished  disease, 
and  couched  the  blind,  and  soothed  the  maniac,  by 
miracles  of  power,  so  does  it  still  heal  and  bless  by 
its  miracles  of  love.  Who  has  not  seen  the  frequent 
transformation  it  effects  in  the  wayward,  frivolous, 
self-indulgent  child,  when  some  living  point  has 
been  touched  within  the  heart ;  how  it  seems  to 
create  wisdom,  experience,  energy,  and  serenity  at 


THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    US.  123 

a  stroke,  and  teaches  her  best  to  administer  the 
daily  and  nightly  medicine  of  an  unspeakable  affec- 
tion to  the  sufferings  of  a  sick  brother,  or  the  infir- 
mities of  an  aged  parent.  It  puts  a  divine  fire  into 
the  dullest  soul,  and  draws  in  Saul  also  among  the 
prophets ;  it  turns  the  peasant  into  the  apostle,  and 
the  apostle's  meanest  follower  into  the  martyr. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  sudden  change  of  mind  ef- 
fected by  a  newly-opened  faith.  In  the  primitive 
Christian  doctrine  such  change  plainly  seems  to  have 
been  recognized  as  possible.  And  in  spite  of  all 
that  philosophers  have  written,  with  some  truth  but 
not  the  whole  truth,  respecting  the  power  of  habit, 
and  the  slow  and  severe  pace  of  moral  improvement 
and  recovery,  and  the  impossibility  of  abrupt  con- 
version, I  believe  there  is  a  profound  reality  in  the 
opposite  and  popular  belief  (as  indeed  there  must  be 
in  all  popular  beliefs  respecting  matters  of  mental 
experience).  It  is  quite  true,  that  instantaneous  re- 
generation of  the  mind  is  not  a  phenomenon  of  the 
commoner  sort,  especially  in  the  present  day ;  but  it 
is  also  true,  that  of  all  the  remarkable  moral  recove- 
ries that  occur,  (alas!  too  few  at  best,)  almost  the 
whole  are  of  this  kind.  It  is  quite  true,  that  the 
upward  effort  of  the  will,  when  it  exchanges  the 
madness  of  passion  for  the  perceptions  of  reason,  are 
toilsome,  and,  if  successful,  tardy;  and  if  all  trans- 
formations of  conscience  were  of  the  deliberate  and 
reasonable  sort,  philosophers  could  not  say  too  much 
about  their  infrequency  and  slowness.  But  the  pro- 
cess springs  from  a  higher  and  more  powerful  source ; 
the  persuasion  is  conducted  by  some  new  and  intense 
affection,  some  fresh  and  vivid  reverence,  followed, 
not  led,  by  the  conscience  and  reason.  The  weeds 


124  THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    US. 

are  not  painfully  plucked  up  by  the  cautious  hand 
of  tillage  reckoning  on  its  fruits,  but  burnt  out  by 
the  blaze  of  a  divine  shame  and  love.  It  is  quite 
true,  that  such  a  change  cannot  be  expected,  that  to 
calculate  on  it  is  inexpressibly  perilous  ;  for  the  deeper 
movements  of  the  soul  shrink  back  from  our  compu- 
tations, refuse  to  be  made  the  tools  of  our  prudence, 
and  insist  on  coming  unobserved  or  coming  never; 
and  he  that  reckons  on  them  sends  them  into  banish- 
ment, and  only  shows  that  they  are  and  must  be 
strangers  to  his  barren  heart.  It  is  quite  true,  that 
self-cure  is  of  all  things  the  most  arduous;  but  that 
which  is  impossible  to  the  man  within  us,  may  be 
altogether  possible  to  the  God.  In  truth,  the  denial 
of  such  changes,  under  the  affectation  of  great  knowl- 
edge of  man,  shows  an  incredible  ignorance  of  men. 
Why,  the  history  of  every  great  religious  revolution, 
such  as  the  spread  of  Methodism,  is  made  up  of  noth- 
ing else ;  the  instances  occurring  in  such  number  and 
variety,  as  to  transform,  the  character  of  whole  dis- 
tricts and  vast  populations,  and  to  put  all  scepticism 
at  utter  defiance.  And  if  some  more  philosophic 
authority  is  needed  for  the  fact,  we  maybe  content 
with  the  sanction  of  Lord  Bacon,  who  observed  that 
a  man  reforms  his  habits  either  all  together  or  not  at 
all.  Deterioration  of  mind  is  indeed  always  gradual ; 
recovery  usually  sudden  ;  for  God,  by  a  mystery  of 
mercy,  has  established  this  distinction  in  our  secret 
nature,  —  that  while  we  cannot,  by  one  dark  plunge, 
sympathize  with  guilt  far  beneath  us,  but  gaze  at  it 
with  recoil  till  intermediate  shades  have  rendered  the 
degradation  tolerable,  —  we  are  yet  capable  of  sym- 
pathizing with  moral  excellence  and  beauty  infinitely 
above  us ;  so  that  while  the  debased  may  shudder 


THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD   WITHIN    US.  1545 

and  sicken  at  even  the  true  picture  of  themselves, 
they  can  feel  the  silent  majesty  of  self-denying  and 
disinterested  duty.  With  a  demon  can  no  man  feel 
complacency,  though  the  demon  be  himself;  but  God 
can  all  spirits  reverence,  though  his  holiness  be  an 
infinite  deep.  And  thus  the  soul,  privately  uneasy 
at  its  insincere  state,  is  prepared,  when  vividly  pre- 
sented with  some  sublime  object  veiled  before,  to  be 
pierced,  as  by  a  flash  from  Heaven,  with  an  instant 
veneration,  sometimes  intense  enough  to  fuse  the 
fetters  of  habit,  and  drop  them  to  the  earth  whence 
they  were  forged.  The  mind  is  ready,  like  a  liquid 
on  the  eve  of  crystallization,  to  yield  up  its  state  on 
the  touch  of  the  first  sharp  point,  and  dart,  over  its 
surface  and  in  its  depths,  into  brilliant  and  beautiful 
forms,  and  from  being  turbid  and  weak  as  water,  to 
become  clear  as  crystal,  and  solid  as  the  rock. 

Meanwhile,  though  acknowledging,  for  the  sake  of 
truth  and  the  understanding  of  God's  grace,  the  pos- 
sibility and  reality  of  such  changes,  we  must  remem- 
ber that,  like  all  vicissitudes  of  the  affections,  they 
neither  come  at  the  direct  command  of  our  will,  nor 
descend  on  those  who  watch  for  external  influences 
to  produce  them.  There  are  those  who  go  about  in 
passive  waiting  for  a  call  from  Heaven ;  who  try  this, 
and  try  that,  and  say,  '  lo,  here ! '  and  '  lo,  there  ! ' 
And  they  find  that  'the  kingdom  of  God  cometh 
not  of  observation.'  Wanting  to  be  holy,  for  the 
sake  of  being  happy,  they  shall  assuredly  be  neither; 
unless  first  the  crust  of  their  selfish  nature  is  broken 
by  affliction,  and  bending  the  head  upon  the  shrine 
of  sorrow,  they  cry  with  a  contrition  that  forgets  to 
be  happy,  —  a  cry  that,  it  may  be,  the  Divine  Spirit 
will  not  despise.  The  kingdom  of  God  is  within 
11* 


126  THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    US. 

us.  In  the  latency  of  every  soul  there  lurks,  among 
the  things  it  loves  and  venerates,  some  earnest  and 
salient  point,  whence  a  divine  life  may  be  begun  and 
radiate  ;  some  incipient  idea  of  duty,  it  may  be,  some 
light  mist  of  disinterested  love,  appearing  vague  and 
nebulous,  and  infinitely  distant  within  the  mighty 
void ;  a  broken  fringe  of  holy  light,  seen  only  in  the 
spirit's  deepest  darkness ;  and  therein  may  be  the 
stirrings  of  a  mystic  energy,  and  the  haze  may  be 
gathered  together,  and  glow  within  the  mind  into  a 
star,  a  sun,  a  piercing  eye  of  God.  But  wherever 
the  Deity  dwelleth  within  us,  he  will  be  unfelt  and  a 
stranger  to  us,  till  we  abandon  ourselves  to  the  duties 
and  aspirations  which  we  feel  to  be  his  voice ;  till 
we  renounce  ourselves,  and  unhesitatingly  precipitate 
our  life  on  the  persuasion  of  our  disinterested  affec- 
tions. While  his  '  Spirit  bloweth  where  it  listeth,' 
yet  certain  it  is  that  they  only  who  do  his  will  shall 
ever  feel  his  power. 


X. 

THE   KINGDOM   OF   GOD   WITHIN   US. 
PART  II. 

MATTHEW  iv.  17. 

FROM   THAT   TIME   JEStfS    BEGAN   TO   PREACH,    AND    TO    SAY,    REPENT  J 
FOR   THE    KINGDOM   OF   HEAVEN   IS   AT   HAND. 

THAT  the  reformation  and  improvement  of  indi- 
vidual character  proceeds  from  within,  not  from  with- 
out ;  that  it  usually  dates,  not  from  any  change  in 
the  condition  and  circumstances  of  life,  but  from  the 
birth  of  some  indigenous  idea  or  affection  in  the 
mind,  is  the  doctrine  which  I  endeavored  to  establish 
in  the  preceding  discourse.  However  natural  may 
be  our  reliance  on  external  influences  and  marked 
transitions  in  our  lot,  as  facilities  for  a  change  of 
mind,  that  reliance  was  shown  to  be  delusive,  and 
even  to  originate  in  a  state  of  feeling,  which  itself 
forbids  the  change.  A  new  and  regenerative  affec- 
tion, wherever  it  finds  root,  springs  up  (like  a  king- 
dom of  God  within  us),  '  not  with  observation,'  but 
silently  and  unconsciously ;  from  suggestions  seem- 
ingly slight  or  even  untraceable ;  with  power  often 
sudden  and  triumphant;  in  a  seat  within  the  soul 
profound  and  central;  whence  a  transforming  force 
radiates  over  the  whole  character  to  its  very  form 
and  visible  expression. 


128  O.HE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    US. 

From  the  case  of  an  individual  man,  we  will  now 
pass  to  that  of  multitudes.     In  societies,  the  order  of 
reformation  will  be  found  to  be  the  same; — from  the 
centre  to  the  circumference ;  from    a   solitary  point 
deep-buried  and  unnoticed,  first  to  the  circumjacent 
region,  and  then  over  the  whole  surface ;  from  the 
native  force  and  inspired  insight  of  some  individual 
mind,  that  kindles,  first  itself,  and  then,  by  its  irre- 
sistible intensity,  a  wider  and  wider  sphere  of  souls  ; 
spirit  being   born   of  spirit,  life   of  life,  thought  of 
thought.     A  higher  civilization,  by  which  I  under- 
stand neither  superior  clothes,  nor  better  houses,  nor 
richer  wines,  nor  even  more  destructive  gunpowder, 
but  a  nobler  system  of  ideas  and  aspirations  posses- 
sing  a   community,  must   commence,  where   alone 
ideas  and  aspirations  can  have  a  beginning,  in  some- 
body's  mind.     Hence,  of   all  the   more   remarkable 
social  revolutions,  the  seminal  principle,  the  primitive 
type,  may  be  traced  to  some  one  man,  whose  spirit- 
ual greatness  had  force  enough  to  convert  genera- 
tions and  constitute  an  era  in  the  world's  life ;  who 
preached   with   power   some   mighty   repentance   or 
transition  of  sentiment  within  the  hearts  of  men,  and 
thus  rendered  more  near  at  hand  that  "  kingdom  of 
Heaven,"  for  which  all  men  sigh  and  good  men  toil. 
Private  "  repentance,"  individual  moral  energy,  deep 
personal  faith  in  some  great  conception  of  duty  or  re- 
ligion, are  the  prerequisites  and  causes  of  all  social 
amelioration. 

It  might  appear  a  waste  of  breath  to  make  asser- 
tion of  so  plain  a  truth  as  this,  were  it  not  for  the 
disposition  of  men  to  invert  this  order,  to  plan  new 
systems  of  society  in  order  to  perfect  the  individual, 
instead  of  seeking  in  the  individual  conscience  the 


THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD   WITHIN    US.  129 

germ  of  a  nobler  form  of  society.  Every  vice  and 
grievance,  every  evil,  physical  and  moral,  which 
may  afflict  any  class  of  a  community,  is  apt  to  be 
charged  exclusively  upon  faulty  institutional  arrange- 
•  ments ;  upon  laws  or  the  want  of  laws ;  on  forms  of 
government;  on  economical  necessity;  on  some  ex- 
ternal causes  which  lift  off  the  weight  of  responsibil- 
ity from  the  individual  will,  and  make  men  passive 
and  querulous  under  wrong,  instead  of  active  and 
penitent.  Their  aspirations  are  turned  without,  rather 
than  within ;  become  complaints  instead  of  efforts  ; 
and  spoil  their  tempers  instead  of  ennobling  their 
energies.  They  must  have  the  world  mended,  before 
they  can  be  expected  to  be  better  than  they  are :  they 
reverse  the  solemn  exhortation  of  my  text ;  and  pro- 
pose to  make  a  stir  to  get  the  '  kingdom  of  Heaven ' 
established  first  ;  and  then  repentance  and  moral 
renovation  will  follow  of  course.  The  machinery  of 
human  motives  being,  we  are  sometimes  assured,  al- 
together out  of  order,  the  manufacture  of  characters 
is  unavoidably  far  from  satisfactory.  And  not  unfre- 
'quently  a  truly  surprising  amount  of  faith  is  mani- 
fested in  the  skill  of  certain  moral  mechanists,  who 
promise  to  rectify  the  disorder,  and  form  for  us  only 
the  true  specimens  of  men.  Self-interest  is  the  one 
force,  by  which  all  speculators  of  this  class  propose 
to  animate  their  new  frame-work  of  society ;  its  ap- 
plication being  ingeniously  distributed  so  as  to  main- 
tain an  unerring  equilibrium,  and  smoothly  execute 
the  work  of  duty.  A  hard-worked  power  is  this  Self- 
interest;  by  which  vulgar  minds,  in  schools  of  philo- 
sophy or  in  councils  of  state,  have  from  an  early  age 
thought  to  subdue  and  manage  men;  but  from  which, 
time  after  time,  they  have  broken  loose  in  startling 


130  THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    US. 

and  remarkable  ways.  Against  this  reliance  for  hu- 
man improvement  on  institutions  and  economical 
organization,  apart  from  agencies  internal  and  spirit- 
ual, Providence  and  history  enter  a  perpetual  protest. 
And  it  behoves  all  wise  men  to  add  their  voices  too  ; 
the  more  so,  because  it  is  the  tendency  of  our  times 
rather  to  criticize  society,  than  to  ennoble  and  sanc- 
tify individuals ;  to  apply  trading  analogies  to  great 
questions  of  human  improvement ;  to  place  as  im- 
plicit a  faith  in  the  omnipotence  of  self-interest  in 
morals  as  of  steam  in  the  arts ;  forgetting  that  be- 
tween the  grossest  and  the  most  refined  form  of  this 
principle,  there  can  only  be  the  difference  between 
the  cannibal  and  the  epicure.  Let  us  not  glorify  the 
body  of  civilization,  and  overlook  its  soul :  and  while 
luxuriating  in  its  fruits,  neglect  the  waters  at  its 
secret  root. 

The  systematic  socialist,  who  is  confident  he  '  can 
explain  the  origin  of  evil,'  and  no  less  sure  that  he 
can  remove  it  by  a  kind  of  mental  engineering  or  ex- 
act computation  of  human  wants  and  desires,  is  the 
extreme  exemplification  of  this  spirit.  In  order  to 
indicate  the  fallacy  of  his  scheme,  it  is  not  necessary 
to  travel  beyond  his  own  class  of  illustrations.  He 
perpetually  calls  the  arrangements  into  which  he  pro- 
poses to  fit  the  world,  a  '  machine.'  In  every  machine 
there  is  a  power  to  move,  and  a  resistance  to  over- 
come ;  and  in  this  particular  project  for  curing  the 
errors  and  perfecting  the  minds  of  men,  it  is  clear  that 
the  social  organization  is  relied  upon  as  the  power,  to 
repress  the  human  passions  and  will,  considered  as 
resistance.  Yet,  as  organization  is  nothing  in  itself, 
but  merely  a  disposition  of  parts  through  which  force 
may  be  transmitted  from  point  to  point,  no  effect  can 


THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    US.  131 

ensue  till  it  is  filled  and  animated  with  some  energy 
not  its  own  ;  nor  in  this  case  can  the  boasted  engine 
of  improvement  be  worked  but  by  the  very  minds  it 
is  intended  to  control ;  and  the  power  and  the  resist- 
ance being  thus  the  same,  the  machine  must  stand 
still,  as  certainly  as  the  inventions  on  which  sciolists 
waste  their  ingenuity,  for  producing  perpetual  motion 
and  self-revolving  wheels.  Or,  to  take  an  illustration 
from  morals  rather  than  from  physics,  it  is  the  same 
mistake,  by  which  a  disorderly  mind  expects  to  ac- 
quire faithfulness  and  punctuality  of  conscience,  from 
a  neatly-arranged  list  of  employments,  and  a  well- 
filled  scheme  for  the  disposal  of  the  hours.  While 
the  force  of  good  resolve  which  produced  the  list  re- 
mains, the  self-made  law  continues  to  be  obeyed,  and 
the  program  looks  up  with  a  grave  and  venerable  au- 
thority. But  the  occasion  passes,  the  tension  of  the 
heart  relaxes,  temptations  crowd  and  hurry  back ;  and 
the  slips  of  conscience  recommence,  and  confusion 
triumphs  again,  though  the  paper  plans  of  duty  are 
symmetrical  as  ever ;  looking  now  with  vain  remon- 
strance at  our  rebellion,  till  discarded  and  trodden 
under  foot  for  reminding  us  of  our  departed  alle- 
giance. 

It  is  far  from  my  desire  to  speak  lightly  of  the  im- 
portance of  institutional  and  political  change.  But 
perhaps,  at  the  present  day,  the  true  light  in  which  to 
regard  it  is,  that  its  function  is  to  check  evil,  rather 
than  create  positive  good ;  to  prevent,  by  timely  re- 
moval, an  injurious  variance  between  the  mind  of  a 
people  and  its  ways ;  and  leave  room  for  the  unem- 
barrassed operation  of  all  active  causes  of  improve- 
ment that  may  spread  from  the  centres  of  private  life. 
More  than  this  is  usually  expected ;  the  intensity  of 


132  THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    US. 

political  passion  exaggerates  the  magnitude  of  the 
stake ;  and  hence,  measures,  or  the  defeat  of  mea- 
sures, of  social  innovation,  usually  disappoint  by  the 
smallness  of  the  result ;  while  the  conceptions  and 
acts  of  single  minds,  piercing  the  deeps  of  human 
sympathies,  and  touching  the  springs  of  the  human 
will,  often  start  from  secrecy  and  neglect  to  a  power 
transcendent  and  sublime.  While  the  vastest  and 
best-executed  schemes  of  subversion  and  reconstruc- 
tion are  necessarily  transient,  the  creation  of  deep 
individual  faith  is  the  mightiest  and  most  permanent 
of  human  powers. 

For  an  example  we  need  only  turn  to  the  grandest 
of  revolutions,  the  travels  and  triumphs  of  Christi- 
anity itself.  We  do  injustice  to  the  gospel,  and  gra- 
tuitously lessen  the  wonder  of  its  spread,  when  we 
speak  of  it  as  a  system,  deliberately  projecting  the 
downfall  of  the  existing  order  of  things,  and  urged 
on  mainly  by  the  physical  power  or  intellectual  per- 
suasion of  miracle.  No  comprehensive  scheme  of 
policy,  no  continuous  plan,  no  study  of  effect  how- 
ever benevolent,  can  be  traced  in  our  Lord's  ministry. 
These  ingenuities  are  the  necessary  resort  of  our 
feeble  minds,  which  have  to  adapt  themselves  with 
nicety  to  foreign  causes,  to  conciliate  events  instead 
of  commanding  them,  to  accumulate  power  by  making 
each  step  contribute  something  to  the  next.  But 
where  there  is  an  exuberance  of  strength,  and  every 
moment  is  in  itself  equal  to  the  demand  made  upon 
it,  the  soul  may  retain  its  divine  freedom,  unchained 
by  the  successive  links  of  preconceived  arrangement. 
Art  and  strategy  constitute  the  wisdom  of  those 
whose  ends  must  be  gained  against  the  wills  of  oth- 
ers ;  but  are  misplaced  in  those  who  act  upon  and  by 


THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    TTS.  133 

their  loving  and  consenting  mind.  There  is  a  wis- 
dom of  the  understanding,  arising  from  foresight, 
which  demands  policy ;  there  is  a  higher  wisdom  of 
the  soul,  derived  from  insight,  which  dispenses  with 
it.  To  discern  'that  which  is  before  and  after'  has 
been  pronounced  the  great  human  prerogative ;  but  to 
see  clearly  that  which  is  within  is  the  divine.  And 
this  was  Christ's  ;  the  source  of  that  majestic  power 
by  which,  as  the  hierophant  and  interpreter  of  the 
godlike  in  the  soul,  he  uttered  everlasting  oracles. 
He  penetrated  through  the  film  to  the  inner  mystery 
and  silence  of  our  nature ;  and  when  he  spake,  an 
instant  music,  —  as  of  a  minster-organ  touched  by 
spirits  at  midnight,  —  thrilled  and  made  a  low  chant 
within.  O  when  speech  is  given  to  a  soul  holy  and 
true  as  his,  Time,  and  its  dome  of  ages,  becomes  as 
a  mighty  whispering  gallery,  round  which  the  im- 
prisoned utterance  runs  and  reverberates  for  ever. 
His  awful  vows  in  the  wilderness,  the  mournful 
breathings  of  Olivet,  the  mellow  voice  that  led  the 
hymn  at  the  last  Supper,  the  faint  cries  of  Calvary, 
the  solemn  assurance  that  heaven  and  God  dwell  in 
us,  —  do  they  not  ring  and  vibrate  in  our  hearts  unto 
this  day  ?  It  was  not  chiefly  the  force  of  external 
miracle  on  the  convictions,  not  the  logical  persuasion 
of  his  mere  authority,  not  even  the  soundness  and 
reasonableness  of  his  doctrine,  that  gave  to  his  re- 
ligion its  penetrative  power ;  but  the  mind  itself,  of 
which  his  life  and  discourse  were  but  the  symbol  and 
expression  ;  the  clearness  and  beauty  with  which  he 
revealed  that  portion  of  the  Deity  that  may  dwell  in 
man,  and  by  action  as  well  as  words,  proved  the  re- 
ality of  holiness,  cast  to  the  winds  the  doubts  that 
hung  as  foul  mists  around  all  that  was  divine,  and 
12 


134  THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    US. 

drew  it  forth  from  the  world's  background  of  night  in 
colors  soft  as  the  rainbow,  yet  intense  as  the  sun. 
Had  the  soul  of  Christ  been  different,  in  vain  would 
all  external  endowments  of  verbal  truth  and  physical 
omnipotence  have  been  accumulated  on  him.  It  was 
that  spirit  within,  —  the  impersonation  of  heavenly 
love  and  light,  —  that  retained  around  him  by  un- 
conscious attraction  the  little  band  of  simple  men,  to 
whom  it  was  'the  Father's  good  pleasure  to  give' 
this  '  kingdom,'  —  this  transcendent  dominion  over 
the  human  heart.  It  was  this  that  imparted  to  them 
their  best  inspiration,  and  made  them  missionaries 
and  martyrs ;  that  followed  them  like  an  unearthly 
vision  through  life,  in  persecution  and  peril  giving 
them  '  that  very  hour  what  they  ought  to  say ; '  in 
temptation  and  conflict  coming  as  '  an  angel  to 
strengthen '  them  ;  in  prison  and  in  bonds,  enabling 
them  to  say,  '  but  none  of  these  things  move  us.' 
Here  was  one  of  God's  great  powers  abroad  among 
men,  which  it  was  impossible  should  die.  True,  the 
world's  heart  seemed  old  and  withered;  the  more 
perhaps  would  the  new  element  spread,  like  a  fire 
bursting  in  the  heart  of  a  forest  dry  and  dead.  Soon, 
in  the  dark  and  unvisited  recesses  of  many  an  an- 
cient city,  there  lurked  a  living  point  of  faith  ;  per- 
ceptible at  first  only  in  the  altered  countenance  of 
the  Jew,  whose  lip  no  longer  curled  in  scorn,  and 
whose  pride  was  turned  to  mercy ;  or  in  the  opened 
brow  of  the  slave,  from  whom  abjectness  seemed 
chased  away  ;  or  in  the  murmurs  of  happy  prayer, 
that  strayed  from  some  wretched  cabin  into  the 
street,  mingling  there  with  the  traffic,  the  revelry,  the 
curse.  This  was  the  faith  which  was  to  tread  the 
earth  with  royalty  so  great ;  precisely,  be  it  observed, 


THE    KINGDOM    OP    GOD    WITHIN    US.  135 

because  it  thus  began  its  march,  conquering  each  in- 
dividual heart  that  came  nearest  to  its  reach,  and 
leaving  there  a  garrison  of  truth  and  love,  before 
passing  on  to  newer  victories.  Thus,  before  the  holi- 
ness of  Christ,  which  was  and  is  the  supreme  energy 
of  the  gospel,  the  craft  of  hierarchies,  and  the  force  of 
governments,  and  the  inertia  of  a  massive  civilization, 
gave  way.  And  while  thousands  of  state-projects  on 
the  vastest  scale  have  been  conceived,  executed  and 
forgotten  ;  while  on  the  field  of  history  the  repeated 
tramp  of  armies  has  been  heard  to  approach,  to  pass 
by,  to  die  away ;  while  the  noisy  shifting  of  nations, 
and  the  shriek  of  revolutions  have  gone  up  from  earth 
to  heaven,  and  left  silence  once  more  behind,  —  this 
meek  power  triumphs  over  all ;  speaking  with  a  per- 
suasion which  no  vicissitudes  of  language  can  render 
obsolete,  and  throughout  the  ever-varying  abodes  of 
humanity  singing  its  sweet  songs  to  our  heavy  hearts. 
The  revival  of  Christianity  from  its  corruptions 
illustrates  the  same  truth ;  that  the  greatest  social 
changes  begin  in  the  creation  of  individual  faith. 
I  am  aware  that  both  the  origin  and  the  reformation 
of  our  religion  are  sometimes  appealed  to  by  scepti- 
cal and  subversive  minds,  as  justifying  contentment 
with  their  method  of  procedure,  which  consists  only 
in  destroying  something  falsely  esteemed  venerable. 
No  doubt,  on  a  first  view,  both  these  revolutions 
seem  to  have  overturned  a  great  deal.  But  on 
nearer  inspection  this  character  will  be  found  to 
have  belonged  to  them  as  a  mere  accident,  not  as 
their  essence  ;  as  a  symptom  of  something  deeper, 
not  as  their  ultimate  spirit.  Neither  of  them  was  a 
merely  negative  and  disorganizing  agency,  simply 
annihilating  a  sacred  system  of  ideas;  but  each, 


136  THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    US. 

on  the  contrary,  a  positive  and  creative  power  put- 
ting into  the  mind,  not  doubts,  but  faith  ;  not  emp- 
tying and  closing  up  the  shrine  of  the  secret  heart, 
but  consecrating  and  opening  it  afresh  for  worship. 
As  new  faiths,  however,  demand  new  forms,  and  a 
living  religion  cannot  find  a  fitting  church  in  the 
dead  body  of  an  old  one,  temples,  rites,  and  priests, 
that  once  had  greatness,  ceased  to  be,  replaced  by 
other  and  sincerer  ones.  Thus,  it  is  true,  these 
revolutions  overwhelmed  ancient  institutions,  but 
only  by  creating  new  ideas ;  their  internal  spirit 
was  organic ;  their  external  effect  only  subversive- 
The  Reformation  can  never  be  properly  understood, 
so  long  as  it  is  looked  at  either  in  the  light  of  a 
change  of  doctrines,  or  a  publication  of  the  right 
of  the  intellect  to  free  inquiry.  It  was,  essentially, 
a  substitution  of  individual  faith  for  sacerdotal  reli- 
ance, of  personal  religion  for  ecclesiastical  obedience. 
The  same  spirit,  in  a  less  healthy  form,  reappeared, 
to  reproduce  the  same  phenomena,  when  Methodism 
arose,  and  diffused  itself  with  gradual  but  triumphant 
power  from  the  earnest  souls  of  the  Wesleys.  In 
all  these  instances,  the  regenerative  influence  com- 
mences its  action  with  the  great  mass  of  the  people ; 
for  it  is  an  apparent  law  of  Providence,  that  while 
in  society  knowledge  descends,  faiths  ascend;  while 
science,  doubt,  opinion,  all  ideas  of  the  understand- 
ing, gravitate  from  the  few  to  the  many ;  affections, 
convictions,  truths  of  the  conscience  and  the  heart, 
rise  from  the  many  to  the  few. 

Those  who  are  unused  to  this  mode  of  conceiv- 
ing of  human  improvement,  as  spreading  from  secret 
centres  to  a  wide  circumference,  and  who  are  ac- 
customed to  the  notion  of  civilization  by  external 


THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    US.  137 

agencies,  may  perhaps  adduce  the  printing-press,  as 
an  instance  of  a  vast  engine  of  amelioration,  mechan- 
ical rather  than  moral.  It  is  obvious,  however,  that 
the  press,  with  all  its  magic,  is  not  a  power  in  itself, 
but  a  mere  instrument :  —  a  tool,  whose  influence,  in 
kind  and  degree,  depends  altogether  on  the  spiritual 
forces  that  wield  it;  which  might  be  given  to  the 
savage,  without  producing  the  smallest  fruits  of  cul- 
ture ;  and  to  a  community  of  the  vicious,  without 
producing  any  culture  that  is  good.  It  is  simply  an 
implement  for  the  transmission  of  mental  effort ;  and 
it  is  the  thought,  not  the  machinery,  that  works  the 
wonders  of  which  we  boast.  Its  function  is,  to  bring 
into  contact  such  minds  as  there  are;  and,  as  in 
private  intercourse,  it  depends  on  the  character  of 
those  minds,  whether  is  circulated  the  vitality  of 
health,  or  the  contagion  of  disease.  It  is  true,  indeed, 
that,  in  the  long  run,  the  highest  spirits  are  always 
the  strongest  too ;  but  this  is  a  law  of  nature,  which 
human  inventions  did  not  make  and  cannot  alter; 
and  the  press,  giving  equal  voice  to  all,  leaves  the 
proportionate  influence  of  different  orders  of  minds 
precisely  where  it  was  ;  widening  the  empire,  but  not 
redisposing  of  the  victory.  And  after  all,  it  cannot 
serve  as  an  equivalent  to  the  living,  individual  action 
of  soul  on  soul.  Who  will  compare  a  printed  Testa- 
ment with  the  voice  and  presence  of  an  apostle  ? 
the  words  may  be  the  same,  and  what  is  called  the 
meaning  may  be  apprehended ;  but  see  how  list- 
lessly the  poor  laborer  in  his  cottage  turns  over  the 
dead  page,  missing  the  comment  of  imploring  ges- 
ture, and  kindling  eye,  and  earnest  tones,  which 
doubtless  pierced  and  fired  the  audience  of  Paul ! 
To  individual  faithfulness,  then,  to  the  energy  of 
12* 


138  THE    KINGDOM    OF    GOD    WITHIN    US. 

the  private  conscience,  has  God  committed  the  real 
history  and  progress  of  mankind.  In  the  scenes 
wherein  we  daily  move,  from  the  capacities  common 
to  us  all,  do  drop  the  seeds  from  which,  if  ever,  the 
Paradise  of  God  must  grow  and  blossom  upon  the 
earth.  He  that  can  be  true  to  his  best  and  secret 
nature,  that  can,  by  faith  and  patience,  conquer  the 
struggling  world  within,  is  most  likely  to  send  forth 
a  blessed  power  to  vanquish  the  world  without. 
Mysteries  of  influence  fall  from  every  earnest  voli- 
tion, to  return  to  us,  in  gladness  or  in  weeping,  after 
many  days.  No  insult  can  we  pass  upon  the  divine 
but  gentle  dignity  of  duty,  no  quenching  of  God's 
spirit  can  we  allow,  that  will  not  prepare  a  curse  for 
others  as  well  as  for  ourselves ;  nor  any  reverence, 
prompt  and  due,  in  act  as  in  thought,  can  we  pay 
to  the  God  within,  that  will  not  yield  abundant 
blessing.  See,  then,  that  ye  walk  circumspectly,  not 
as  fools,  but  as  wise. 


XI. 

THE  CONTENTMENT  OF  SORROW. 

ISAIAH  LIII.  10. 

YET  IT  PLEASED  THE  LORD  TO  BRUISE  HIM  J   HE  HATH  PUT  HIM 

TO   GRIEF. 

FROM  age  to  age  mankind  have  importunately 
sought  for  the  reasons  of  sorrow  ;  and  from  age  to 
age  have  returned  from  the  quest  unsatisfied ;  for 
still  is  the  question  constantly  renewed.  How  could 
it  be  otherwise  ?  As  sickness  entered  house  after 
house,  and  waste  made  havoc  on  generation  after 
generation,  it  was  inevitable  that  our  terrified  hearts, 
ever  clinging  to  that  which  must  be  wrenched  away, 
and  warmed  by  that  which  must  be  stricken  by  the 
frosts  of  death  in  our  embrace,  should  cry,  Oh !  why 
these  cruel  messages  of  separation,  these  decrees  of 
exile  thrown  amid  groups  of  friends  and  kindred  ? 
But  the  angel  of  destruction  makes  no  reply;  silently 
he  executes  his  mission ;  only  he  relents  not ;  and 
whether  he  be  met  by  tears  and  prayers,  or  by  frowns 
and  the  deplorable  affectation  of  defiance,  he  does 
his  sacred  bidding,  and  passes  on.  It  would  seem 
that  our  passionate  curiosity,  which  continues  to 
urge  its  '  why  ? '  is  never  to  be  satisfied  ;  but  still  to 
hand  down  its  question  as  the  eternal  and  unan- 
swered cry  of  the  human  race.  And  however  im- 
patient some  minds  may  feel  at  our  helpless  struggles 


140  THE    CONTENTMENT    OF    SORROW. 

with  this  difficulty,  the  thoughtful  will  acquiesce  in 
them  tranquilly.  For  they  know  that  it  is  of  such 
unsolved  problems,  of  such  mental  strife  with  the 
mysterious,  which  uses  up  our  knowledge,  and  lets 
us  fall  upon  our  conscious  ignorance,  that  religion 
has  its  birth ;  and  that  the  perpetual  renewal  of  this 
great  controversy  maintains  the  soul  in  that  interme- 
diate position  between  the  known  and  the  incompre- 
hensible, the  finite  and  the  infinite,  which  excludes 
as  well  the  dogmatism  of  certainty  as  the  apathy 
of  nescience  and  chance,  and  calls  up  that  wonder, 
reverence,  and  trust,  which  are  the  fitting  attri- 
butes of  our  nature.  There  is  a  sense  in  which 
the  maxim  has  a  profound  truth,  that  '  ignorance  is 
the  mother  of  devotion  ; '  —  a  sense,  however,  by  no 
means  justifying  the  continuance  of  any  ignorance 
which  can  be  removed,  or  can  degrade  one  human 
being  below  another ;  but  tending  to  reconcile  us  to 
such  as  may  be  rendered  inevitable  by  the  limits 
assigned  to  our  faculties.  If  men  knew  everything, 
they  would  venerate  nothing.  Reverence  is  not  the 
affection  with  which  objects  of  knowledge,  as  such, 
are  regarded;  and  to  place  any  object  of  thought 
under  the  eye  of  religious  contemplation,  it  must  be 
stationed  above  the  region  of  distinct  perception,  in 
the  shadows  of  that  Infinitude  which  sleeps  so 
awfully  around  the  luminous  boundaries  of  our 
knowledge.  In  this  position  is  the  great  question 
respecting  the  amount  of  evil  in  human  life  ;  near  the 
highest  summit  of  our  knowledge,  and  the  deepest 
root  of  our  religion. 

To  the  demand  of  the  human  heart  for  less  suf- 
fering and  a  more  liberal  dispensation  of  happiness, 
no  answer,  as  from  God,  can  be  discovered  in  scrip- 


THE    CONTENTMENT    OF    SORROW.  141 

ture  or  in  philosophy  ;  and  all  attempts  to  assign  his 
reasons  for  the  present  adjustments  of  the  world,  in 
this  respect,  have,  I  believe,  signally  failed.  But  it  is 
otherwise  when  we  attempt  an  answer  as  from  our- 
selves ;  when  instead  of  taking  for  granted  that  the 
demand  is  just,  and  waiting  till  it  obtains  its  reply 
from  without,  we  -look  into  the  demand  itself,  and 
ask  whether  it  is  wise  and  right ;  whether  it  comes 
from  a  condition  of  the  understanding  and  the  heart 
desirable  and  excellent,  or  disordered  and  ignoble. 
Paradox  as  it  may  seem,  it  is,  I  conceive,  still  true, 
that  the  state  of  mind  which  urges  the  question  is 
necessarily  incapable  of  understanding  the  answer. 

At  the  foundation  of  all  our  difficulties  and  ques- 
tionings respecting  the  evils  of  our  lot,  is  a  secretly 
cherished  notion,  that  we  have  a  right  to  a  more 
advantageous  condition.  We  imagine  ourselves  in 
some  way  ill-treated,  and  think  we  might  fairly  have 
expected  a  happier  life.  We  speak  as  beings  who 
had  formed  anticipations  more  sanguine  than  have 
been  realized.  The  feeling  that  asks  for  more  hap- 
piness has  evidently  a  private  standard  of  its  own, 
by  which  it  tries  the  sufficiency  of  its  own  enjoy- 
ment ;  —  an  ideal  measure  which  it  applies  in  its 
judgment  of  the  actual  providence  of  God  ;  and  this 
is  the  rule,  by  which  alone  the  estimate  of  that 
Providence  is  made.  Now  what  is  the  origin  of  this 
criterion,  to  which  we  submit  the  decision  of  the 
solemn  question  respecting  the  character  of  God  ? 
How  do  we  make  up  our  conceptions  of  the  amount 
of  happiness  which  we  may  fittingly  expect?  There 
is  but  one  school  in  which  all  our  expectations  are 
trained,  viz.  experience ;  but  one  source  of  belief 
respecting  the  future ;  viz.  knowledge  of  the  past ; 


142  THE    CONTENTMENT    OF    SORROW. 

that  which  actually  has  been,  dictates  all  our  ideas  of 
what  possibly  may  be.  That  image,  then,  of  ade- 
quately happy  life  which  we  complain  of  not  real- 
izing, that  picture  which  would  perfect  our  content, 
is  a  repetition  of  what  we  have  felt,  a  miniature  of 
our  habitual  consciousness,  painted  in  the  colors  of 
positive  experience.  Our  present  ideal  is  God's  past 
reality ;  nor  could  we  ever  have  framed  even  the 
notion  of  such  enjoyment,  had  not  our  own  lot  been 
one  of  peace.  By  blessing  us,  he  gives  us  the  power 
to  entertain  hard  thoughts  of  him ;  and  we  take 
occasion,  from  his  claims  upon  our  gratitude,  to 
judge  harshly  of  his  government.  Had  he  made  us 
miserable  (as  we  now  count  misery),  inured  us  to 
severities  so  constant  as  even  to  shut  out  the  concep- 
tion of  any  thing  better,  we  should  have  been  ready 
with  a  song  of  thanksgiving  for  the  mercies  of  a  lot 
now  raising  only  murmurs.  Impious  perversity,  that 
thus  renders  to  God  evil  for  good,  and,  in  answer  to 
blessing,  mutters  forth  a  curse ! 

That  the  tacit  claim  which  we  make  upon  Provi- 
dence has  really  its  origin  in  a  happy  experience, 
is  confirmed  by  a  fact  often  noticed,  that  habitual 
sufferers  are  precisely  those  who  least  frequently 
doubt  the  Divine  benevolence,  and  whose  faith  and 
love  rise  to  the  serenest  cheerfulness.  Possessed  by 
no  idea  of  a  prescriptive  title  to  be  happy,  their 
blessings  are  not  benumbed  by  anticipation,  but 
come  to  them  fresh  and  brilliant  as  the  first  day's 
morning  and  evening  light  to  the  dwellers  in  Para- 
dise. Instead  of  the  dulness  of  custom,  they  have 
the  power  of  miracle.  With  the  happy,  it  is  their 
constant  peace  that  seems  to  come  by  nature,  and  to 
be  blunted  by  its  commonness,  —  and  their  griefs  to 


THE    CONTENTMENT    OF    SORKOW.  143 

come  from  God,  sharpened  by  their  sacred  origin  :  — 
with  the  sufferer,  it  is   his  pain  that  appears  to  be  a 
thing  of  course,  and  to  require  no  explanation,  while 
his  relief  is  reverently  welcomed  as   a  divine  interpo- 
sition, and  as  a  breath  of  Heaven,  caresses  the  heart 
into  melodies  of  praise.     When  the  great  Father,  in 
his  everlasting  watch,  paces    his   daily  and  nightly 
rounds,  and  through  these   lower   mansions   of   his 
house  gathers  in  the  offered   desires  of  his  children, 
where,  think  you,  does  he  hear  the  tones  of  deepest 
love,  and  see  on  the  uplifted  face  the  light  of  most 
heartfelt  gratitude?     Not  where  his  gifts  are  most 
profuse,   but  where   they  seem   most   meagre ;    not 
where  the  suppliant's  worship  glides  forth  from  the 
cushion  of  luxury,  through  lips  satiated  with  plenty, 
and  rounded   by  health  ;  not  within  the  halls  of  suc- 
cessful ambition,  or  even  the  dwellings  of  unbroken 
domestic  peace  ;  but  where  the  outcast,  flying  from 
persecution,  kneels   in   the   evening  upon   the  rock 
whereon  he  sleeps ;  at  the  fresh  grave,  where,  as  the 
•  earth  is  opened,  Heaven  in  answer  opens  too ;  by  the 
pillow  of  the  wasted  sufferer,  where  the  sunken  eye, 
denied  sleep,  converses  with  a  silent  star,  and  the 
hollow  voice  enumerates  in  low  prayer  the  scanty 
list  of  comforts,  and  shortened  tale  of  hopes.     Genial, 
almost  to  a  miracle,  is  the  soil  of  sorrow ;  wherein 
the  smallest  seed  of  love,  timely  falling,  becometh  a 
tree,  in  whose  foliage  the  birds  of  blessed  song  lodge 
and  sing  unceasingly.     And  the   doubts   of    God's 
goodness,  whence  are  they  ?     Rarely  from  the  weary 
and  over-burdened,  from  those  broken  in  the  practical 
service  of  grief  and  toil ;  but  from  theoretic  students 
at  ease  in  their  closets  of  meditation,  treated  them- 
selves most  gently  by  that  ligislation  of  the  universe 
which  they  criticize  with  a  melancholy  so  profound. 


144         THE  CONTENTMENT  OF  SOKEOW. 

There  are,  indeed,  those  who  discern  nothing  sanc- 
tifying in  sorrow ;  who  say  that  they  are  best  when 
they  are  happiest,  —  of  prompter  conscience,  of 
nobler  faith,  of  more  earnest  aspirations ;  who  seem 
sunk  in  apathy  or  stung  into  irritability  by  affliction  ; 
and  who  pass  through  it,  finding  therein  no  waters 
of  life,  but  only  a  scorched  desert,  —  where  the  earth 
is  as  sand  beneath,  and  the  heavens  as  molten  fire 
above.  Those  whose  sympathies  thus  dry  up  and 
wither  in  grief,  as  if  a  hot  wind  had  swept  over 
them,  are  infected  with  the  fever  of  self.  In  the 
inner  and  subterranean  chamber  of  their  nature  are 
no  cool  springs  of  affection,  collected  from  the  treas- 
ured dews  of  heaven,  but  nether  fires  glowing  out- 
wards to  meet  the  heats  that  strike  inwards  from  the 
skies.  They  are  given  over  to  the  insatiable  idea 
of  mere  happiness  in  one  form  or  other;  and,  this 
ungratified,  find  refreshment  in  nothing  more  divine. 
Failing  in  the  passive  half  of  life,  they  pride  them- 
selves on  the  energy  with  which,  in  cheerful  days, 
they  execute  their  active  duties.  But  it  is  clear  that 
these  are  not  executed  as  duties,  —  as  due,  that  is,  to 
the  high  and  holy  law  by  which  God  rules  us  with 
pure  affection.  They  have  no  deep  root  of  love,  but 
grow  from  some  shallower  sentiment,  —  the  sense  of 
propriety,  the  respect  to  opinion,  the  taste  for  order, 
the  suggestions  of  ambition ;  for  were  there  the  true 
affectionate  heart  of  reverence,  how  could  it  thus 
stipulate  in  favor  of  its  own  self-will,  how  litigate 
with  God  for  ampler  wages  ?  How  refuse  his  wil- 
ling service,  unless  the  post  of  command  and  action 
be  given,  and  grow  sullen  to  be  appointed  but  a 
door-keeper  at  the  gate  of  his  tent  of  dwelling,  on 
the  outside  of  its  light  and  joy  ?  Certain  it  is  that 


THE    CONTENTMENT    OF    SORROW.  145 

no  one  possessed  by  this  temper  can  be  the  true 
disciple  of  the  Man  of  Sorrows,  or  look  with  the  eye 
of  Christ  on  nature  and  life.  No  holy  spirit  fills  and 
consecrates  their  scenes ;  no  silken  cords  of  divine 
love  weave  together  the  whole  tissue,  dark  or  gay, 
of  human  existence,  and  make  it  all  as  a  garment  of 
God,  more  sacred  than  prophet's  mantle.  What 
difference  did  it  make  to  Christ,  whether  in  the 
wilderness  he  did  fierce  battle  with  temptation,  or 
sat  on  the  green  slope  to  teach  the  people,  and  send 
them  home  as  if  God  dropped  upon  their  hearts 
amid  the  shades  of  evening ;  whether  he  stood  over 
the  corpse,  and  looking  on  the  dark  eyes,  said,  '  Let 
there  be  light,'  and  the  curtains  of  the  shadows  of 
death  drew  up,  or  saw  the  spirit  of  duty  approach 
himself  in  the  dress  of  the  grave,  and  on  the  mourn- 
ful whisper,  '  Come  away,'  tendered  his  hand,  and 
was  meekly  led  ;  whether  his  walk  was  over  strewn 
flowers,  or  beneath  the  cross  too  heavy  to  be  borne ;  — 
amid  the  cries  of  '  Hosanna,'  or  the  murderous  shout? 
The  difference  was  all  of  pain  ;  —  none  was  there  of 
conscience,  of  trust,  of  power,  of  love.  Let  there  be 
a  conscious  affiliation  with  God ;  and  as  he  per- 
vadeth  all  things,  a  unity  is  imparted  to  life,  and  a 
stability  to  the  mind,  which  put  not  happiness  in- 
deed, but  character  and  will,  above  the  reach  of 
circumstance:  a  current  of  pure  and  strong  affections, 
fed  by  the  fount  of  bliss,  pours  from  hidden  and 
sunlit  heights,  and  winds  through  the  open  plains 
and  dark  ravines  of  life,  till  its  murmurs  fall  into  the 
everlasting  deep. 

Thus  far  our  complaints   against  the  evils  of  our 
lot  would   appear  to  indicate  a  wrong  state  of  mind 
towards  God.     The  disappointment  in  which  they 
13 


146  THE    COXTENTMEXT    OF    SORROW. 

originate  is  the  result  of  happy  experience ;  and  had 
we  never  been  blessed,  we  could  never  be  querulous. 
In  the  natural  place  of  affectionate  retrospect,  we 
suffer  the  intrusion  of  murmurs ;  and  our  quarrel 
with  the  present  is  a  hostile  substitute  for  gratitude 
towards  the  past.  When  the  custom  of  God's 
mercies  thus  tempts  us  to  forget  that  they  are  gratu- 
ities, and  hardens  us  to  make  bold  claims  of  prescrip- 
tive right ;  when  we  begin  to  reckon  among  his  gifts 
only  the  extraordinary  and  unexpected  benefits  of 
our  lot,  and,  measuring  his  goodness  by  the  mere 
overflowings  of  the  cup,  become  angry  when  happi- 
ness does  not  rise  to  the  brim,  —  it  is  time  for  our 
pampered  minds  to  learn,  by  discipline  of  grief,  a  less 
wayward  temper  ;  the  canker  of  too  long  a  comfort 
is  eating  out  the  whole  religion  of  our  hearts.  We 
are  dressing  up  our  life,  as  if  it  were  the  eternal 
palace  of  a  god,  instead  of  the  brief  halt  and  hospice 
of  the  pilgrim ;  and  there  were  mercy  in  the  stroke 
that  should  lay  it  in  ruins,  and  send  our  unsheltered 
head  into  the  storm,  to  seek  our  rest  in  a  meeker  and 
more  suppliant  spirit.  It  is  no  mere  superstition  that 
leads  us  sometimes  to  say,  of  a  prosperity  and  out- 
ward peace,  that  it  is  '  too  great  to  last ; '  not  indeed 
that  any  blessing  is  too  great  for  God  to  give,  but 
only  too  great  for  us  to  receive.  Freely  might  he 
continue  it,  but  innocently  we  should  scarce  enjoy  it, 
in  perpetuity ;  and  it  is  the  intuitive  perception  of 
this,  the  secret  consciousness  that  the  upward  gush 
of  gratitude  is  growing  feebler, — that  the  incrusta- 
tions of  ease  are  creeping  over  the  wells  of  spiritual 
life,  —  that  causes  us,  amid  our  comforts,  to  tremble 
as  in  a  day  of  wrath,  and  occasionally  sheds  over  the 
brilliant  colors  of  enjoyment  a  slight  and  mysterious 


THE  CONTENTMENT  OF  SORROW.          147 

tinge,  as  from  the  shadow  of  guilt.  It  is  awful  and 
prophetic  as  the  handwriting  on  the  wall;  becoming 
a  splendor,  as  of  the  heavens,  to  those  who  revere  it, 
and  a  blackness,  as  of  doom,  to  those  that  neglect  it. 
Blessed  are  they  that,  turning  an  eye  within,  can 
discern  and  interpret  it  betimes! 

And  if  our  complaints  of  trial  and  suffering  result 
from  a  wrong  state  of  mind  in  relation  to  God,  they 
no  less  imply  mistake  in  relation  to  ourselves  and 
erroneous  ideas  of  our  own  welfare.  At  least  our 
griefs  of  bereavement  (which  are  the  severest  of  all), 
our  expostulations  with  death,  treat  as  utterly  gone 
treasures,  whose  best  portion  is  with  us  still ;  even 
proved  to  be  present  by  the  very  tears  that  weep 
their  absence.  For  wherein  consists  the  value  of 
parent,  child,  or  friend  ?  Is  it  in  the  use  we  may 
make  of  him,  or  in  the  love  we  feel  for  him  ?  Is  it 
in  his  form,  his  voice,  his  features,  or  in  the  dear 
memories  and  delightful  affections  which  these 
awaken  in  our  minds  ?  As  a  foreign  land  differs 
from  our  own,  not  in  its  soil,  but  in  its  recollections ; 
as  another  house  differs  from  our  own,  not  by  its 
materials,  but  by  the  spirit  of  its  associated  feelings ; 
'not  as  a  substance,  but  as  a  sign,  —  so  does  a  friend 
differ  from  a  stranger,  not  in  his  person,  but  in  his 
power  over  our  hearts.  He  is  nothing  to  us,  but  for 
the  impression  he  leaves  upon  our  souls,  to  present 
which  is  the  mission  whereto  God  has  sent  him,  and 
the  office  for  which  we  love  him.  Of  all  the  ingre- 
dients that  enter  into  that  infinitely  complex  thing,  a 
human  life,  of  all  the  influences  that  radiate  from  it, 
and  proclaim  it  there,  none  surely  are  so  essential  as 
the  affections  it  kindles  in  others;  and  if  beings 
around  entertain  of  it  a  blessed  and  noble  concep- 


148         THE  CONTENTMENT  OF  SOKKOW. 

tion,  are  filled  by  it  with  generous  aspirations,  and 
feel  the  thought  of  it  to  be  as  a  fire  from  heaven,  in 
this.is  its  true  and  best  existence ;  in  this  consists  its 
real  identity,  distinguishing  it  by  strongest  marks  from 
other  minds.  And  all  this  death  leaves  behind,  as 
our  indestructible  possession ;  from  our  mere  eyes  he 
takes  the  visible  form  of  the  objects  of  our  love,  for 
this  is  only  borrowed ;  from  our  souls  he  cannot  take 
the  love  itself  to  which  that  is  subservient ;  for  it  is 
given  us  for  ever.  The  very  grief  that  wastes  us 
testifies  that,  in  his  true  worth,  the  companion,  we 
lament  as  lost,  is  with  us  still ;  for  is  it  not  the  idea 
of  him  that  weeps  in  us,  his  image  that  supplies  the 
tears  ?  His  best  offices  he  will  continue  to  us  yet,  if 
we  are  true  to  him ;  with  serenest  look,  as  through 
the  windows  of  the  soul,  rebuking  our  disquiet, 
bracing  our  faith,  quickening  our  conscience,  and 
cooling  our  fever-heats  of  life.  Doubtless  the 
thought  of  him  is  transmuted  from  gladness  into 
sorrow.  But  will  any  true  heart  say  that  an  affec- 
tion is  an  evil  because  it  is  sad,  and  wish  to  shake 
it  off  the  moment  it  brings  pain  ?  Call  it  what 
you  will,  that  is  not  love  which  itself  is  anxious 
to  grow  cold ;  the  emotions  of  a  faithful  soul  never 
entertain  a  suicidal  purpose,  and  plan  their  own 
extinction  ;  rather  do  they  reproach  their  own  insen- 
sibility, and  passionately  pray  for  a  greater  vitality. 
Whether  then  in  anxiety  or  in  peace,  in  joy  or  in 
regrets,  let  the  spirit  of  affection  stay;  and  if  the 
spirit  stay,  the  objects,  though  vanished,  leave  their 
best  presence  with  us  still.  No;  that  only  is  truly 
lost  which  we  have  ceased  to  love.  If  there  be  a 
friend  whom  in  our  childhood  or  our  youth  we  vene- 
rated for  the  wisdom  of  virtue  and  beauty  of  holiness, 


THE    CONTENTMENT    OF    SORROW.  149 

and  whom  now  we  regard  with  the  aversion  of  cor- 
rupted tastes,  or  the  coldness  of  callous  hearts,  he 
indeed  is  lost ;  if  there  be  a  companion  whose  hand 
was  once  locked  in  ours  with  the  vows,  seemingly  so 
firm,  of  our  enthusiastic  years,  and  on  whom  now 
we  look  with  a  mind  frozen  by  the  worldliness  or 
poisoned  by  the  jealousies  and  rivalries  of  life, — 
such  a  one  is  surely  lost ;  but  not  the  departed  who 
left  our  world  with  benediction,  and  fell  close-locked 
in  our  embrace ;  such  a  one,  though  dead,  yet  speak- 
eth;  the  others,  though  living,  are  silent  to  our  hearts. 
Of  the  alienated  the  loss  is  absolute,  an  extinction  of 
a  part  of  our  nature.  But  the  sainted  dead  shall 
finish  for  us  the  blessed  work  which  they  began. 
They  tarried  with  us,  and  nurtured  a  human  love ; 
they  depart  from  us,  and  kindle  a  divine.  Cease 
then,  our  complaining  hearts,  and  wait  in  patience 
the  great  gathering  of  souls ! 


13* 


XII. 

IMMORTALITY. 
2  COR.  i.  9. 

WE  HAD  THE  SENTENCE  OF  DEATH  IN  OURSELVES,  THAT  WE  SHOULD 
NOT  TRUST  IN  OURSELVES,  BUT  IN  GOD  WHO  RAISETH  THE  DEAD. 

PAUL,  at  his  nearest  view  of  death,  obtained  his 
firmest  '  trust  in  God  who  raiseth  the  dead.'  Socrates, 
with  the  cup  of  poison  in  his  hand,  declares  it  power- 
less ;  and  taking  it  as  the  pledge  of  temporary  parting 
from  his  weeping  friends,  goes  cheerfully  forward  to 
explore  the  future.  We,  who  are  in  no  such  ex- 
tremity, but  at  ease  and  in  command  of  the  strong 
posts  of  life,  are  seduced  into  sceptic  misgivings  of 
its  perpetuity,  and  are  conscious  of  at  least  transient 
doubts,  whether  soul  and  body  do  not  go  out  together. 
And  so,  indeed,  it  ever  is.  Amid  the  so-called  goods 
of  existence,  we  most  shudder  at  the  view  of  its 
privations ;  while  from  active  contact  with  its  griefs, 
its  grandeur  appears  least  doubtful,  and,  in  the  bold 
struggle  with  ills,  they  prove  a  phantom,  and  slip 
away.  From  the  sunlight  heights  of  life,  the  deep 
vales  and  hollows  of  its  necessities  look  darkest; 
but  to  the  faithful  whose  path  lies  there,  there  is 
still  light  enough  to  show  the  way,  and  to  no  other 
eyes  do  the  everlasting  hills  and  blue  heavens  seem 
so  brilliant.  Our  nobler  faith  is  not  dashed,  as  we 
suppose,  by  the  severities,  but  rather  enervated  by 


IMMORTALITY.  151 

the  indulgences,  of  experience;  it  is  on  the  bed  of 
luxury,  not  on  the  rock  of  nature,  that  scepticism 
has  its  birth.  Paul,  the  hardly-entreated  apostle,  the 
homeless  and  ever-perilled  missionary,  —  his  back 
scarred  with  stripes,  his  hands  heavy  with  bonds, 
the  outcast  of  Jewish  hate  and  Pagan  scorn,  —  writes 
as  he  flies,  to  ask  the  voluptuous  Corinthians,  '  How 
say  some  among  you  that  there  is  no  resurrection  of 
the  dead  ? '  and  to  prove  in  words  that  immortality 
of  which  his  life  was  the  demonstration  in  action. 
And  while  from  the  centre  of  comforts  many  a  sad 
fear  goes  forth,  and  the  warmest  lot  becomes  often 
filled  with  the  chillest  doubts,  hidden  within  it  like  a 
heart  of  ice  that  cannot  melt,  you  may  find  toiling 
misery  that  trusts  the  more,  the  more  it  is  stricken, 
and  amid  the  secret  prayers  of  mourners  hear  the 
sweetest  tones  of  hope. 

This  paradox  is  far  from  being  inexplicable.  All 
true  religion  is  a  sense  of  want;  and  where  want 
goes  to  sleep  upon  possession,  it  becomes  bewildered, 
and  when  occasionally  opening  its  eyes,  sees  nothing 
with  the  clearness  of  reality.  Religion  implies  a 
perception  of  the  infinite  and  invisible ;  and  where 
the  finite  is  illuminated  too  strongly,  nothing  else 
can  be  discerned,  and  all  beyond  appears,  not  dim 
twilight  shadow,  but  blank  darkness.  The  full-orbed 
brilliancy  of  life  brings  out  the  colors  of  the  earth, 
and  makes  it  seem  as  vast  and  solid  as  if  there  were 
nothing  else ;  in  the  midnight  watch,  it  is  felt  only  at 
the  point  beneath  our  feet,  and  the  sphere  of  stars  in 
which  it  swims  alone  is  seen.  Indeed  the  suspicion, 
that  this  life  is  our  all,  appears  to  be  simply  an 
example,  upon  a  large  scale,  of  a  delusion  and  dispro- 
portion of  idea,  which  we  are  continually  experiencing 


152  IMMORTALITY. 

in  detail  and  without  which  perhaps  our  discerning 
and  our  practical  energies  would  be  ill-harmonized. 
I  allude  to  that  exaggeration  of  the  present  moment, 
that  concentration  of  anxiety  and  effort  on  the  present 
object,  which  makes  the  point  of  pending  action  every 
thing,  and  for  a  time  kills  the  reality  of  all  beside. 
Desire,  else  broken  by  dispersion,  singles  out  project 
after  project  in  succession,  on  which  to  gather  all  its 
intensity;  each  in  turn  becomes  the  vivid  and  sole 
point  of  life ;  as  the  eye  applied  to  the  microscope 
may  see  the  centre  of  the  field,  without  notice  of 
the  margin  of  the  very  object  beneath  its  view. 

This  optical  exclusiveness  of  mind,  this  successive 
insulation  of  effort,  is  the  needful  condition  on  which 
the  will  performs  its  work  with  gladness;  for  who 
would  not  sink  and  faint  upon  the  dust,  if  the  whole 
task  of  existence  were  spread  before  him  at  once? 
Let  us  then,  in  practice,  as  the  laborers  of  God,  bless 
him  for  our  blindness;  but  in  meditation,  as  the  be- 
lievers of  God  and  explorers  of  his  Providence,  not  on 
that  account  deny  that  there  is  light.  Our  delusion, 
operating  in  detail,  is  corrected  by  experience,  which 
shifts  us  ever  to  a  new  point  of  view ;  and  how  often 
do  we  smile  in  retrospect  at  the  passionate  self-preci- 
pitation, the  silent  tension  or  stormy  force  of  desire, 
with  which  we  bent  towards  some  aim,  that  seem  for 
the  instant  the  very  goal  of  life;  the  eagle-eyed  pre- 
cision with  which  we  fell,  as  on  a  prey,  upon  some- 
thing that  now  seems  one  of  the  most  trivial  creatures 
that  stirs  the  grass.  Our  eyes  once  opened  thus,  we 
say  that  it  'was  a  dream.'  And  most  truly;  for 
those  who  are  awake  always  discover  that  they  have 
been  dreaming;  but  those  who  dream  never  suspect 
that  they  shall  ivake.  For  the  time,  the  images  of 


IMMOKTALITY.  153 

sleep  are  the  intensest  of  realities ;  they  are  the  sleep- 
er's universe ;  they  agitate  him  with  hope  and  terror, 
with  love  and  grief,  with  admiration  and  transport,  as 
genuine  as  human  heart  can  feel;  while  they  continue 
to  flit  around  him,  they  shut  in  and  limit  his  belief, 
and  totally  exclude  the  conceptions  suitable  to  the 
world  on  which  he  lies.  And  so  is  it  with  the  long 
trance  of  human  life ;  we  are  ever  dreaming  to  the 
present,  and  waking  to  the  past;  clearly  estimating 
each  illusion  when  it  is  gone,  but  too  vividly  occu- 
pied with  new  ones  to  expect  any  morning  summons 
to  a  correcting  world  beyond.  Not  till  we  are  startled 
by  that  call,  and  stand  outside  our  existing  sphere  of 
thought,  can  we  discover  how  much  of  phantasm 
there  is  in  life  as  a  whole.  But  the  wise  will  assured- 
ly distrust  their  feeling  of  its  exclusive  reality ;  will 
know  that  if  it  were  a  mere  scenic  image,  a  painted 
vacancy,  environed  by  immense  and  solemn  realities, 
this  same  feeling  would  have  been  no  less  strong;  and 
they  will  rouse  themselves  so  far  as  at  least  to  '  dream 
that  they  dream.' 

The  feeling  of  impossibility  which,  I  believe,  haunts 
many  persons  in  adverting  to  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  the  vague  apprehension  of  some  insuperable 
obstacle  to  the  realization  of  any  thing  so  great, 
appears  to  arise  from  mere  indolence  of  conception ; 
and  vanishes  in  proportion  as  the  affections  are  deeply 
moved,  and  the  intuitions  of  reason  are  trusted  rather 
than  the  importunities  of  sense.  ^There  is  certainly 
nothing  in  our  idea  of  the  mind,  as  there  is  in  that  of 
organization,  contradictory  of  the  belief  of  its  perpe- 
tuity;— nothing  which  involves  the  notion  of  dissolu- 
tion, or  of  limited  duration.  All  the  properties  of  the 
thinking  principle,  remembrance,  imagination,  love, 


154  IMMORTALITY. 

conscience,  volition,  are  irrespective  of  time ;  are  char- 
acterized by  nothing  seasonal ;  are  incapable  of  disease, 
fracture,  or  decay.  They  have  nothing  in  their  nature 
to  prescribe  their  existence  for  an  hour,  a  century,  a 
thousand  years,  or  in  any  way  to  bring  them  to  ter- 
mination. Were  it  the  will  of  the  Creator  to  change 
his  arrangements  for  mankind,  and  to  determine  that 
they  should  henceforth  live  in  this  world  ten  or  a 
hundred  times  as  long  as  they  do  at  present,  no  one 
would  feel  that  new  souls  would  be  required  for  the 
execution  of  the  design.  And  in  the  mere  conception 
of  unlimited  existence  there  is  nothing  more  amazing 
than  in  that  of  unlimited  non-existence;  there  is  no 
more  mystery  in  the  mind  living  for  ever  in  the  future, 
than  in  its  having  been  kept  out  of  life  through  an 
eternity  in  the  past.  The  former  is  a  negative,  the 
latter  a  positive  infinitude.  And  the  real,  the  authen- 
tic wonder,  is  the  actual  fact  of  the  transition  having 
been  made  from  the  one  to  the  other;  and  it  is  far 
more  incredible  that  from  not  having  been,  we  are, 
than  that  from  actual  being,  we  shall  continue  to  be. 

And  if  there  be  no  speculative  impossibility  in  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  it  cannot  be  rendered  incon- 
ceivable by  any  physical  considerations  connected 
with  death.  We  are  apt,  indeed,  to  be  misled  by  the 
appearances  of  the  last  hour;  appearances  so  appal- 
ling, so  humbling,  so  associated  with  the  memories  of 
happy  affection  and  the  approach  of  bleakest  solitude, 
that  it  would  be  surprising  if  we  did  not  interpret 
them  amiss,  and  see  them  falsely  through  our  tears. 
As  we  turn  away  from  that  last  agony,  we  are 
tempted  to  say  in  our  despair, —  there,  there,  is  the 
visible  return  of  all  to  darkness ;  the  proof  that  all  is 
gone ;  the  fall  of  the  lamp  into  the  death-stream.  Yet 


IMMORTALITY.  155 

it  is  clear  that  neither  the  phenomena  of  death,  nor 
any  other  sensible  impression,  can  afford  the  least 
substantive  evidence  that  the  mind  has  ceased  to  be. 
Non-existence  is  a  negation  which  neither  sight  can 
see,  nor  ear  can  hear;  and  the  fading  eye,  the  motion- 
less lips,  the  chill  hand,  establish  nothing,  and  simply 
give  us  no  report.  Refusing  us  the  familiar  expression 
of  the  soul  within,  they  leave  the  great  question  open, 
to  be  determined  by  any  positive  probabilities  which 
may  be  sought  in  other  directions.  In  life,  we  never 
saw  or  heard  the  principle  of  thought  and  will  and 
love,  but  only  its  corporeal  effects  in  lineament  and 
speech.  If  the  bare  absence  of  these  signs  were 
sufficient  to  prove  the  extinction  of  the  spirit  which 
they  obey,  the  spectacle  of  sleep  would  justify  us  in 
pronouncing  the  mind  dead ;  and  if  neither  slumber 
nor  silence  have  been  found  to  afford  reason  for  the 
denial  of  simultaneous  thought,  death  affords  no  better 
ground  for  the  dreary  inference.  It  is  to  no  purpose 
to  say  that  we  have  not  experience  of  the  separa- 
bility of  consciousness  from  bodily  life  ;  for  originally 
there  was  no  experience  of  the  separability  of  con- 
sciousness from  bodily  waking;  and  with  the  same 
reason  which  would  lead  us  to  mourn  the  extinc- 
tion of  a  friend's  spirit  in  death,  might  Adam  have 
bewailed  the  annihilation  of  Eve  in  the  first  sleep 
of  Eden.  Nay,  if  we  are  not  to  conceive  of  the 
existence  of  friend,  where  there  is  no  physical  mani- 
festation, it  will  follow  that  till  there  was  a  visible 
creation,  there  was  no  Infinite  Spirit;  and  that  if  ever 
the  Creator  shall  cast  aside  the  mantle  of  his  works;  if 
the  order,  the  beauty,  the  magnificence,  of  the  uni- 
verse, through  which  he  appears  to  us,  and  hides  his 
essence  behind  the  symbol  of  his  Infinitude,  are  ever 


156  IMMORTALITY. 

to  have  their  period  and  vanish;  if  ancient  prediction 
shall  be  fulfilled,  and  the  '  heavens  pass  away  with  a 
noise,  and  the  elements  melt  with  fervent  heat;'  that 
hour  will  be,  by  the  same  rule  which  declares  human 
annihilation,  not  only  the  end  of  all  things,  but  the 
death  of  God. 

Indeed  there  is  that  in  the  very  nature  of  the  im- 
material mind,  which  appears  to  me  to  exempt  it  from 
the  operation  of  all  material  evidence  of  its  destruc- 
tion.    It  is  impossible  to  form  a  steady  conception  of 
thought,  except  as  originating  behind  even  the  inner- 
most bodily  structures,  and  intrinsically  different  from 
them.     However  much  you  refine  and  attenuate  the 
living  organism,  yet  after  all,  thought  is  something 
quite  unlike  the  whitest  and  the  thinnest  tissue;  and 
the  most  delicate  of  fibres,  woven  if  you  please  in 
fairy  loom,  can  never  be  spun  into  emotions.     Nor 
is  it  at  all  easier  to  imagine  ideas  and  feelings  to  be 
the  results  of  organization,  and  to  constitute  one  of 
the  physical  relations  of  atoms;  and  if  any  one  affirms 
that  the  juxtaposition  of  a  number  of  particles  makes 
a  hope,  and  that  an  aggregation  of  curious  textures 
forms  veneration,  he  affirms  a  proposition  to  which 
I  can  attach  no  idea.     Agitate  and  affect  these  struc- 
tures as  you  will,  pass  them  through  every  imaginable 
change,  let  them  vibrate  and  glow,  and  take  a  thou- 
sand hues ;  still  you  can  get  nothing  but  motion,  and 
temperature,  and  color ;  fit  marks  and  curious  signals 
of  thought  behind  themselves,  but  no  more  to  be  con- 
founded with  it,  than  are  written  characters  to  be 
mistaken  for  the  genius  and  knowledge  which  may 
record  themselves  in  language.    The  corporeal  frame, 
then,  is  but  the  mechanism  for  making  thoughts  and 
affections  apparent,  the  signal-house  with  which  God 


IMMORTALITY.  157 

has  covered  us,  the  electric  telegraph  by  which  quick- 
est intimation  flies  abroad  of  the  spiritual  force  with- 
in us.  The  instrument  may  be  broken,  the  dial-plate 
effaced;  and  though  the  hidden  artist  can  make  no 
more  signs,  he  may  be  rich  as  ever  in  the  things  to  be 
signified.  Fever  may  fire  the  pulses  of  the  body;  but 
wisdom  and  sanctity  cannot  sicken,  be  inflamed,  and 
die.  Neither  consumption  can  waste,  nor  fracture 
mutilate,  nor  gunpowder  scatter  away,  thought,  and 
fidelity,  and  love,  but  only  that  organization  which 
the  spirit  sequestered  therein  renders  so  fair  and  noble. 
To  suppose  such  a  thing  would  be  to  invert  the  order 
of  rank,  which  God  has  visibly  established  among  the 
forces  of  our  world,  and  to  give  a  downright  ascen- 
dency to  the  brute  energies  of  matter  above  the  vitality 
of  the  mind,  which,  up  to  that  point,  discovers,  sub- 
dues, and  rules  them;  to  proclaim  the  triumph  of  the 
sword,  the  casualty,  the  pestilence,  over  virtue,  truth, 
and  faith ;  to  set  the  cross  above  the  crucified ;  to  sur- 
render the  holy  things  of  this  world  to  corruption,  and 
shroud  its  heaven  with  darkness,  and  turn  its  moon 
into  blood.  Think  only  of  this  earth  as  it  floats 
beneath  the  eye  of  God,  —  a  speck  in  the  blue  infinite, 
—  a  precious  life-balloon  freighted  with  the  family  of 
spirits  he  has  willed  to  come  up  and  travel  in  this 
portion  of  his  universe.  Remember  that  at  this  very 
moment,  and  at  each  tick  of  the  clock,  some  fifty 
souls  have  departed  hence,  gone  with  their  tempestu- 
ous passions,  their  strife,  their  truth,  their  hopes,  into 
space  and  silence ;  not  either  with  the  appearance  of 
forces  spent  and  finished ;  for  there  are  children  fallen 
away,  with  expectant  look  on  life,  nothing  doubting 
the  secure  embrace  that  seem  to  fold  them  round; 
there  is  youth,  raised  up  to  self-subsistence,  not  with- 
14 


158  IMMORTALITY. 

out  difficulty  and  sorrow,  with  the  clear  deep  light  of 
thought  and  wonder  shining  from  within,  quenched  in 
sudden  night ;  there  is  many  an  heroic  life,  built  on 
no  delusion  of  sense  and  selfishness,  but  firm  on  the 
adamant  of  faith,  and  defying  the  seductions  of  false- 
hood and  the  threats  of  fear, —  sunk  from  us  abso- 
lutely away,  and  giving  no  answer  to  our  recalling 
entreaties  and  our  tears.  And  will  you  tell  me  that 
all  this  treasure,  which  is  nothing  less  than  infinite,  is 
cancelled  and  puffed  away,  like  a  worthless  bubble, 
into  emptiness?  Does  God  stand  ahead  of  this 
mighty  car  of  being  as  it  traverses  the  skies,  only  to 
throw  out  the  boundless  wealth  of  lives  it  bears,  and 
plunge  them  headlong  into  the  abyss  midway  on 
their  voyage  through  eternity?  Put  the  question  in 
conjunction  with  any  overwhelming  calamity,  which 
perceptibly  plunges  into  sudden  silence  a  multitude 
of  souls;  like  the  dreadful  destruction,  just  announced 
from  the  western  world,  of  a  ship*  freighted  with 
priceless  lives,  with  the  wealth  of  homes,  the  hopes  of 
the  oppressed,  the  lights  of  nations.  Let  any  one 
think  over  the  contents  of  that  fated  ship,  when  it 
quitted  the  port  at  even,  amid  the  cheerful  parting  of 
friends,  and  consider  well  where  they  were  when  the 
morning  broke.  There  were  travellers  from  foreign 
lands,  ready  with  pleased  heart  to  tell  at  home  the 
thousand  marvels  they  had  gathered,,  on  their  way. 
There  was  a  family  of  mourners,  taking  to  their 
household  graves  their  unburied  dead.  And  there 
was  one  at  least  of  rare  truth  and  wisdom,  of  de- 

*The  steamboat  Lexington,  which  left  New  York  for  Boston,  13th 
January,  1840,  and  was  burned  that  night  in  Long  Island  Sound,  with 
the  loss  of  all  on  board  except  four.  Dr.  Follen  was  among  the  number 
that  perished.  The  present  discourse  was  suggested  by  that  event. 


IMMORTALITY.  159 

signs  than  which  philanthropy  knows  nothing  greater; 
of  faith  that  all  must  venerate,  and  love  that  all  must 
trust;  of  persuasive  lips,  from  which  a  thoughtful 
genius  and  the  simplest  heart  poured  forth  the  true 
music  of  humanity.  And  does  any  one  believe  that 
this  freight  of  transcendent  worth,  —  all  this  sorrow, 
and  thought,  and  hope,  and  moral  greatness,  and  pure 
affection,  —  were  burnt,  and  went  out  with  flame  and 
cotton-smoke?  Sooner  would  I  believe  that  the  fire 
consumed  the  less  everlasting  stars!  Such  a  galaxy 
of  spiritual  light  and  order  and  beauty  is  spread 
above  the  elements  and  their  power,  and  neither  heat 
can  scorch  it  nor  cold  water  drown.  The  bleak  wind, 
that  swept  in  the  morning  over  the  black  and  heav- 
ing wreck,  would  moan  in  the  ear  of  sympathy  with 
the  wail  of  a  thousand  survivors;  but  to  the  ear  of 
wisdom  and  of  faith,  would  sound  as  the  returning 
whisper  and  requiem  of  hope. 

There  appears  to  be  a  caprice  in  the  dispensation 
of  death,  quite  at  variance  with  the  scrupulous  regu- 
larity and  economy  of  nature  in  less  momentous 
affairs;  and  strongly  indicative  of  a  hidden  sequel. 
The  inferior  departments  of  creation  are  marked  by  a 
frugality  and  seasonal  order,  that  seems  to  gather  up 
the  very  fragments  of  good,  that  nothing  be  lost. 
Scarcely  does  a  moment  elapse  before  the  cast-off 
structure  of  plant  or  animal  is  put  in  requisition  for 
some  new  purpose.  Such  value  seems  to  be  attached 
to  the  tree,  that  its  seed  is  encased  and  protected  with 
the  nicest  care,  can  retain  its  principle  of  vitality  for 
thousands  of  years,  and  hold  itself  ready  to  germinate 
whenever  the  suitable  conditions  shall  be  presented. 
The  wrild  animals  have  a  certain  term  of  life  allotted 
to  each  species,  which  probably  few  individuals  much 


160  IMMORTALITY. 

exceed  or  fail  to  reach.  Everything  else  seems  to 
have  its  well-defined  circuit  and  range  of  functions, 
its  season  of  maturity  and  period  of  fall.  But  when 
we  rise  into  the  only  community  dignified  by  minds, 
all  is  in  comparison  confusion  and  seeming  chance. 
Infancy  and  age,  strength  and  imbecility,  the  pure 
and  the  corrupt  of  heart,  the  full  and  empty  souled, 
drop  indiscriminately  away,  as  if  the  spirits  of  men 
were  the  cruel  sport  of  some  high  and  invisible 
demon-game, — kindled  and  extinguished  in  remorse- 
less and  capricious  jest.  And  if  such  a  supposition 
is  excluded  by  the  harmony  and  exactitude  which 
prevail  in  the  other  regions  of  the  creation,  nothing  is 
left  but  to  believe  that  we  see  here  only  the  partial 
operation  of  a  higher  law;  that  we  witness  no  extinc- 
tion, but  simply  migrations  of  the  mind;  which  sur- 
vives to  fulfil  its  high  offices  elsewhere,  and  find 
perhaps  in  seeming  death  its  true  nativity. 

Then,  too,  let  us  consider  in  what  light  we  should 
see  the  character  of  God,  if  the  fall  of  the  body  is 
really  the  fall  of  the  soul ;  remembering  that  he  has 
put  into  the  hearts  of  most  men,  by  intuition  or 
Providential  suggestion,  a  divine  hope  of  something 
future.  Turn  once  more  to  the  thought  of  that 
burning  ship,  and  think  of  the  memorial  sounds 
that  went  up  thence  in  the  night  to  God.  When 
the  stars  came  out  the  first  shriek  ascended ;  two 
hours  past  midnight  the  last  was  drowned.  And  in 
the  interval  did  a  hundred  and  seventy  mortals 
shiver  and  cry  to  him  from  frost  and  flame,  with 
faith  and  prayers  of  various  and  unspeakable  con- 
tents,— the  cold  heavens  looking  serenely  down,  and 
gliding  on  as  if  they  inclosed  nothing  but  peace. 
And  what  was  the  answer  of  the  hearer  of  prayer  to 


IMMORTALITY.  1(51 

that  agony  of  despair  ?  Did  he  say,  as  no  man  or 
angel  would  have  done,  '  Down,  begone  for  ever  into 
darkness!'  And  did  he  so  answer,  with  the  full 
knowledge  of  his  Omniscience,  that  many  a  survi- 
vor would  return  this  awful  frown  with  the  sweetest 
and  most  unconscious  smile  of  resignation,  hiding 
her  mourning  head  with  him,  as  in  the  bosom  of  a 
Father  ?  Or  put  yourselves  back  into  the  presence 
of  an  earlier  and  sublimer  tragedy ;  remember  the 
scene  on  Calvary,  with  the  words  of  assured  hope 
and  meek  supplication  that  passed  there  from  holiest 
lips  to  God.  When  his  own  Christ  gave  the  tran- 
quil assurance,  '  This  day  shalt  thou  be  with  me  in 
Paradise,'  did  He,  who  inspired  that  promise,  and 
alone  could  fulfil,  overhear  it  with  secret  rejection 
and  denial  ?  When  the  fainting  utterance  exclaimed 
with  most  loving  meaning,  '  It  is  finished,'  did  the 
ever-present  Father  put  on  that  cry  a  dreadful  in- 
terpretation, and  '  make  an  end '  of  all  things  to  him, 
—  that  Son  of  God  ?  And  when  he  breathed  forth 
those  last  words, '  Father,  into  thy  hands  I  commit  my 
spirit,'  did  the  All-merciful  refuse  the  trust,  and  reply 
to  that  pure  faith,  '  Take  away  thy  cry,  for  mine  eye 
shall  not  spare,  neither  will  I  hear  with  mine  ear  ? ' 
Did  he  do  thus  to  the  Galilean,  knowing  that,  night 
and  morning,  friends  and  followers  and  disciples  for 
ages,  would  converse  with  him  about  this  departed 
one,  with  a  trustful  hope,  which  he  had  thus  turned 
into  a  lie  ?  Were  this  possible,  God  were  no  '  Father 
of  spirits,'  to  waste  and  mock  them  thus ;  and  might 
no  less  fitly  be  termed  the  destroyer  than  the 
Creator ;  and  every  good  man  might  feel  an  infi- 
nite pity  for  his  kind,  diviner  far  than  the  very  Prov- 
idence of  Heaven. 


162  IMMORTALITY. 

Thus,  if  the  celestial  hope  be  a  delusion,  we 
plainly  see  who  are  the  mistaken.  Not  the  mean 
and  grovelling  souls,  who  never  reached  to  so  great 
a  thought ;  not  the  drowsy  and  easy  natures,  who 
are  content  with  the  sleep  of  sense  through  life,  and 
the  sleep  of  darkness  ever  after ;  not  the  selfish  and 
pinched  of  conscience,  of  small  thought  and  smaller 
love ;  —  no,  these  in  such  case  are  right,  and  the  uni- 
verse is  on  their  miserable  scale.  The  deceived  are 
the  great  and  holy,  whom  all  men,  aye  these  very 
insignificants  themselves,  revere ;  the  men  who  have 
lived  for  something  better  than  their  happiness,  and 
spent  themselves  in  the  race,  or  fallen  at  the  altar,  of 
human  good  ;  —  Paul,  with  his  mighty  and  conquer- 
ing courage  ;  yes,  Christ  himself,  who  vainly  sobbed 
his  spirit  to  rest  on  his  Father's  imaginary  love,  and 
without  result  commended  his  soul  to  the  Being 
whom  he  fancied  himself  to  reveal.  The  self-sacri- 
fice of  Calvary  was  but  a  tragic  and  barren  mis- 
take :  for  Heaven  disowns  the  godlike  prophet  of 
Nazareth,  and  takes  part  with  those  who  scoffed  at 
him  and  would  have  him  die ;  and  is  insensible  to  the 
divine  fitness  when  even  men  have  felt,  when  they 
either  recorded  the  supposed  fact,  or  invented  the 
beautiful  fiction,  of  Christ's  ascension.  Whom  are 
we  to  revere,  and  what  can  we  believe,  if  the  inspi- 
rations of  the  highest  of  created  natures  are  but 
cunningly  devised  fables  ? 

But  it  is  not  so  ;  and  no  one,  who  has  found  true 
guidance  of  heart  from  these  noblest  sons  of  Heaven, 
'will  fear  to  stake  his  futurity,  and  the  immortal  life  of 
his  departed  friends,  on  their  vaticinations.  These, 
of  all  things  granted  to  our  ignorance,  are  assuredly 
most  like  the  hidden  realities  of  God  ;  which  may  be 


IMMORTALITY.  163 

greater,  but  will  not  be  less,  than  prophets  and  seers 
have  foretold,  and  even  our  own  souls,  when  gifted 
with  highest  and  clearest  vision,  discern  as  truths  not 
doubtful  or  far  off.  In  this  hope  let  us  trust,  and  be 
true  to  the  toils  of  life  which  it  ennobles  and  cheers. 
Whoever  'fights  the  good  fight'  shall  surely  'keep 
the  faith  ; '  for  God  reveals  the  secret  of  his  future 
will  to  those  who  worthily  do  it  in  the  present. 
This  is  our  proper  care.  Putting  ourselves  into  his 
hands,  and  living  in  submissive  harmony  with  his 
everlasting  laws,  let  us  '  finish  our  course  ; '  and  leave 
it  to  him  to  take  us,  when  he  will,  where  our  fore- 
runners are,  and  the  unfoldings  of  his  ways  are  seen 
with  open  eye. 


XIII. 

/ 

THE   COMMUNION   OF  SAINTS. 
EPHESIANS  n.  19. 

FELLOW-CITIZENS  WITH   THE  SAINTS,  AND   OP  THE  HOUSEHOLD  OF   GOD. 

SOCIETY  becomes  possible  only  through  religion. 
Men  might  be  gregarious  without  it,  but  not  social. 
Instinct,  which  unites  them  in  detail,  prevents  their 
wider  combination.  Intellect  gives  light  to  show 
the  elements  of  union,  but  no  heat  to  give  them 
crystalline  form.  Self-will  is  prevailingly  a  repulsive 
power,  and  often  disintegrates  the  most  solid  of 
human  masses.  Even  the  Moral  Sentiment,  so  far 
as  it  recognizes  man  as  supreme,  and  simply  tries  to 
make  a  prudent  adjustment  of  his  vehement  forces, 
can  produce  among  a  multitude  only  an  unstable 
equilibrium,  liable  every  moment  to  be  subverted  by 
the  ever-shifting  gravitation  of  the  passions.  Some 
sense  of  a  Divine  Presence,  some  consciousness  of  a 
higher  Law,  some  pressure  of  a  solemn  Necessity, 
will  be  found  to  have  preceded  the  organization  of 
every  human  community,  and  to  have  gone  out  and 
perished  before  its  death.  There  is  great  signifi- 
cance in  the  tradition  which,  in  every  people  of  ap- 
parently aboriginal  civilization,  attributes  an  inspired 
character  to  their  first  Lawgiver,  and  pronounces 
their  subjection  to  moral  order  a  task  which  only  the 
force  of  Heaven  could  achieve.  They  only  whose 


THE    COaiJiUNION    OS    SAINTS.  165 

voice  could  reach  the  sleeping  tones  of  worship  in  the 
hearts  of  men,  and  awaken  some  deep  faith  and  al- 
legiance, could  so  deal  with  their  wild  nature,  as  to 
chain  the  savage  passions,  and  set  free  the  nobler 
will.  And  although,  in  old  societies,  the  innumer- 
able fibres  of  government,  of  usage,  of  established 
ideas,  supply  a  thousand  secondary  bonds,  which 
seem  to  make  the  mighty  growth  secure  as  the  forest 
oak,  yet  all  this  system  of  roots  has,  I  believe,  its 
secret  nutriment  from  the  devout  elements  of  a  na- 
tion's mind ;  and  if  these  should  dry  up  in  any  Arctic 
chill  of  doubt,  or  be  poisoned  by  any  Epicurean  rot 
of  indulgence,  it  would  silently  decay  within  the  soil, 
and  leave  the  fairest  tree  of  history,  first  with  a  sick- 
ening foliage,  and  soon  with  a  perished  life.  The 
most  compact  and  gigantic  machinery  of  society,  — 
as  experience  shows,  —  falls  to  pieces,  wherever  reli- 
gious and  moral  scepticism,  by  paralyzing  faith  and 
heroism  and  hope,  has  cut  off  the  supply  of  spiritual 
power.  Rome,  at  the  commencement  of  our  era,  had 
reached  the  utmost  point  of  material  force  and  vis- 
ible magnificence  ;  her  organization  held  with  an  iron 
grasp  the  continents  of  Europe  and  the  East ;  her 
military  chain  spread  with  unbroken  links  from 
Lebanon  to  Gaul,  and  from  the  Caspian  to  the 
^Ethiopic  Nile  ;  her  wealth  and  arts  had  called  into 
being  ten  thousand  cities, —  no  mean  imitations  of 
her  own  greatness ;  her  institutions  had  diffused  a 
universal  repose,  and  the  energy  of  government  was 
exercised  with  a  rapidity  and  precision  never  sur- 
passed. What  brought  a  power  thus  mighty,  —  a 
power  that  called  itself  '  eternal,'  — to  its  dissolution  ? 
Shall  we  be  content  with  a  figure  of  speech,  and 
say  that  it  broke  asunder  from  its  excessive  mass  ? 


166  THE    COMMUNION    OF    SAINTS. 

Apart  from  spiritual  decline  and  causes  of  moral  dis- 
union, I  know  nothing  to  prevent  a  uniform  civiliza- 
tion from  reaching  the  most  enormous  bulk.    Shall  we 
refer  rather  to  external  dangers  ;  and  calling  to  mind 
the  tempest   of  barbarians  that  'roared   around  the 
gates  of  the  empire,'  say  that  it  perished  like  a  Mam- 
moth, in  a  drift  of  Northern  snows  ?     Yet  with  far 
less  imposing  resources,  she  had   stood  up  and  lived 
through  fiercer  storms.     No ;  the  stroke  was  not  of 
war,  but   of  paralysis.     The   heart   of  religion  had 
ceased  to  beat;  the  high  faith,  the  stern  disinterested- 
ness, the  sacred  honor  of  the  republic,  had  faded  into 
tradition  ;  the  sanctities  of  life  were  disbelieved  even 
in  the  nursery ;  no  binding  sentiment  restrained  the 
greediness  of  appetite    and  the  licentiousness  of  self- 
will  ;  the  very  passions,  with  whose  submission  alone 
society  can  begin,  broke  loose  again,  —  attended  by 
a  brood  of  artificial  and  parasitic  vices  that  spread 
the  dissolute  confusion.     Yet   it  was  not   that  the 
conditions  of  social  union  had   become  impossible. 
For  observe ;  in  the  midst  of  this  corruption,  in  the 
invisible  recesses  of  profligate  cities,  a  small  point  of 
fresh  young  life  is  already  to  be  discerned,  like  the 
bud  of  some  fair  growth  thrusting  up  its  head  among 
the  putrefying  leaves.     A  few  poor  slaves  and  out- 
cast Hebrews   have  heard  the  divinest  whisper  borne 
to  them  from  Palestine ;  have  discovered  by  it  that 
inner  region  of  love  and  hope  and  trust,  in  which  all 
fraternity  of  heart  begins ;  and  are  banded  together 
with  a  spirit  that  soon  speaks  out  and  prophecies  in 
martyrdom.     While    Rome  displayed   its   greatness 
even  in  death,  and  struggled  with  the  convulsions  of 
a  giant,  the  infant  faith  remained  unharmed  ;  healing, 
as  it  could,  the  wounds  which  the  mad  world  suf- 


THE    COMMUNION    OF    SAINTS.  167 

fered ;  and  like  a  fair  immortal  child,  winning  a 
blessed  way  by  entrancing  the  souls  of  men  with 
the  forgotten  vision  of  a  divine  simplicity  and  truth. 
Christianity  has  ever  since  been  the  bond  of  Euro- 
pean civilization  ;  and  should  its  spirit  ever  perish 
hence,  this  glorious  family  of  nations  will  be  dis- 
solved. 

Let  us  look,  with  more  detail,  into  some  of  the 
natural  groups  which  a  genuine  faith  can  form ;  and 
we  shall  find  nothing  incredible  in  its  strong  com- 
bining power. 

Worship  exhibits  its  uniting  principle  in  the  sim- 
plest form,  in  the  sympathies  it  diffuses  among  the 
members  of  the  same  religious  assembly. 

It  is  universally  felt  that  devotion  must  sometimes 
quit  the  solitude  of  the  cell,  forget  its  mere  individual 
wants,  and  speak  as  from  humanity's  great  heart  to 
God.  The  scruples  of  the  few  who  have  objected  to 
social  piety  have  met  with  no  response;  they  are 
justly  regarded  as  the  eccentricities  of  a  stiff  and 
petty  rationalism,  that  will  not  stir  without  a  literal 
precept,  and  trusts  any  logical  finger-post  (possibly 
set  the  wrong  way  by  the  humor  of  some  sophistry), 
rather  than  the  cardinal  guidance  of  those  high  affec- 
tions which  are  in  truth  the  imperishable  lights  of 
heaven.  To  this  house  we  come,  my  friends,  drawn, 
not  by  arbitrary  command  which  we  fear  to  disobey ; 
not  by  self-interest,  temporal  or  spiritual,  which  we 
deem  it  prudent  to  consult ;  not,  I  trust,  from  the 
dead  conventionalism  that  brings  the  body  and 
leaves  the  soul ;  but  by  a  common  quest  of  some 
holy  spirit  to  penetrate  and  purify  our  life  ;  by  a 
common  desire  to  quit  its  hot  and  level  dust,  and 
from  its  upland  slopes  of  contemplation  inhale  the 


168  THE    COMMUNION    OF    SAINTS. 

serenity  of  God ;  by  the  secret  sadness  of  sin,  that 
can  delay  its  confessions  and  bear  its  earthliness  no 
more ;  by  the  deep  though  dim  consciousness,  that 
the  passing  weeks  do  not  leave  us  where  they  find 
us,  but  plant  us  within  nearer  distance,  and  give  us 
a  more  intimate  view,  of  that  fathomless  eternity, 
wherein  so  many  dear  and  mortal  things  have  drop- 
ped from  our  imploring  eyes.  It  is  no  wonder  that 
in  meditations  solemn  as  these  we  love  and  seek 
each  other's  sympathy.  It  is  easy,  no  doubt,  to 
journey  alone  in  the  broad  sunshine  and  on  the 
beaten  highways  of  our  lot ;  but  over  the  midnight 
plain,  and  beneath  the  still  immensity  of  darkness, 
the  traveller  seeks  some  fellowship  for  his  wander- 
ings. And  what  is  religion,  but  the  midnight  hemis- 
phere of  life,  whose  vault  is  filled  with  the  silence  of 
God,  and  whose  everlasting  stars,  if  giving  no  clear 
light,  yet  fill  the  soul  with  dreams  of  immeasurable 
glory  ?  It  will  be  an  awful  thing  to  each  of  us  to  be 
alone,  when  he  takes  the  passage  from  the  mortal  to 
the  immortal,  and  is  borne  along,  —  with  unknown 
time  for  expectant  thought,  —  through  the  space  that 
severs  earth  from  heaven ;  and  till  then,  at  least,  we 
will  not  part,  but  speak  with  the  common  voice  of 
supplicating  trust  of  that  which  awaits  us  all. 

There  is,  however,  no  necessary  fellowship,  as  of 
saints,  in  the  mere  assembling  of  ourselves  together ; 
but  only  in  the  true  and  simple  spirit  of  worship. 
All  these  occasions  of  devotion  assume  that  we  have 
already  some  affections  to  express ;  that  we  have  dis- 
cernment of  the  divine  relations  of  our  existence ; 
that  we  have  souls  seeking  to  cry  out  in  prayer,  and 
waiting  to  lie  down  before  God  in  tears.  The  ser- 
vices of  this  place  are  quite  mistaken  by  those  who 


THE    COMMUNION    OF    SAINTS.  169 

look  on  them  as  the  means  of  obtaining  a  religion 
non-existent  yet;  who  see  in  them  only  the  instru- 
ments of  self-discipline ;  who  perform  here  no  per- 
sonal act  of  the  mind,  but  passively  wait  such 
operation  as  may  befall  them  ;  or  who  assume  in 
their  mental  offerings,  not  the  desires  and  emotions 
which  they  really  experience,  but  those  instead  which 
they  only  ought  to  feel,  and  hope  to  realize  at  last  by 
persevering  false  profession.  The  lips  are  to  follow 
the  heart,  and  cannot  lead  it;  and  we  are  here,  not 
to  make  use  of  God  for  the  sake  of  our  devotion,  but 
to  pour  forth  devotion  for  the  sake  of  God.  Were 
every  one  in  a  Christian  assembly  to  be  all  the  while 
intent  on  his  own  improvement,  to  be  subordinating 
everything  to  his  own  case,  and  with  morbid  scrupu- 
losity to  be  prescribing  throughout  for  his  own  tem- 
per, there  would  be  simply  no  proper  worship  at  all ; 
there  would  be  not  the  least  union  of  hearts ;  each 
would  sit  insulated  with  his  own  separate  self,  and 
would  be  more  naturally  placed  in  a  solitary  cell, 
than  amid  an  unsocial  multitude ;  there  would  be 
none  of  that  sublime  ascent  of  soul,  that  common 
flight  of  love,  in  which  all  individuality  is  lost,  all 
personal  regards  absorbed,  and  the  vision  of  Heaven 
and  God  melts  the  many  minds  and  many  voices  of 
the  Church  in  one.  O  how,  within  that  Presence 
whose  intimacy  enfolds  us  here,  can  we  ever  stay 
outside  the  spirit  of  worship,  and  perform  mere  con- 
scientious gestures  of  the  mind,  and  act  a  part  even 
with  ourselves  alone  as  its  spectator?  Will  nothing 
short  of  the  death-plunge  into  eternity  steep  us  in  its 
mystery,  and  strip  off  the  spirit-wrappings  that 
cover  us  from  the  communion  of  God?  We  stand 
here,  as  in  Heaven's  last  resort  for  penetrating  to 
16 


170  THE    COMMUNION    OF    SAIXTS. 

the  earnest  centre  of  our  nature;  and  if  the  foun- 
tain of  the  secret  life  is  still  encased  and  does  not 
flow,  no  common  shock  can  break  the  icy  crust  that 
binds  it. 

Think  only,  in  simplest  and  briefest  review,  of  the 
considerations  that  pass  before  us  at  our  meeting 
here.  At  this  hour  of  prayer,  when  we  stand  within 
the  reality  of  God,  and  face  to  face  behold  his  awful- 
ness,  and  tell  how  we  are  glad  at  all  his  graciousness ; 
when  we  hear  the  sweet  voice  of  Christ,  —  mellowed 
and  deepened  as  it  floats  over  eighteen  centuries  of 
meaning, —  saying  to  us,  as  we  bend  beneath  the 
weight  of  life,  '  Come  unto  me,  ye  heavy-laden  ; ' 
when  we  own  the  shameful  conquests  of  temptation, 
and  repent  of  the  abandoned  strife,  and  rebuild  the 
fallen  purpose ;  when  there  is  set  before  us  the  divine 
dignity  of  existence,  and  the  majesty  of  our  free-will, 
and  the  high  trust  of  duty,  and  the  tranquil  power  of 
faith ;  when  we  speak  together  of  our  dead,  and 
memory  beholds  their  solemn  forms  so  silent  in  the 
shadows  of  the  past ;  when  we  remember  how,  even 
while  we  think  it,  some  souls  are  surely  passing  away, 
and  soon  we  too  shall  lay  the  burthen  down  and  go ; 
when,  as  from  the  brink  of  being,  we  look  into  futu- 
rity, and  the  true  voice  of  judgment  falls  upon  the 
ear,  startling  as  the  trump  of  conscience  or  healing 
as  the  symphonies  of  the  blest;  when  all  periods  of 
life  assemble  before  the  Everlasting  that  hath  no 
age,  and  the  light  look  of  the  child,  and  the  steady 
features  of  manhood,  and  the  shaken  head  of  age, 
denote  their  several  wants  and  prayers;  when  the 
tempted  comes  to  seek  new  strength,  and  the  mourn- 
er sees  his  sorrows  from  a  higher  point,  and  the 
anxious  is  beguiled  into  a  loving  reliance,  and  the 


THE    COMMUNION    OF    SAINTS.  171 

contrite  weeps  his  sin  and  distrusts  his  tears;  —  at 
such  an  hour,  if  the  disguises  fall  not  from  our  hearts, 
and  leave  us  a  disembodied  fraternity  of  souls  send- 
ing the  chorus  of  common  want  _to  Heaven,  then 
indeed  are  we  slaves  io  the  earthly  life,  without  that 
enfranchisement  of  spirit,  that  makes  possible  a  '  fel- 
lowship of  saints,'  and  exalts  us  to  '  the  household 
of  God.' 

Where,  however,  a  pure  devotion  really  exists,  the 
fellowship  it  produces  spreads  far  beyond  the  sepa- 
rate circle  of  each  Christian  assembly.  A  single 
company  of  pious  men,  gathered  together  from 
among  a  race  that  could  not  worship,  would  indeed 
draw  close  their  mutual  sympathies  at  the  expense 
of  alienation  from  their  kind.  But  it  is  not  so.  We 
are  brought  to  stand  side  by  side  within  this  place 
by  no  exclusive  propensity,  no  whimsical  peculiarity 
of  the  few.  The  impulse  is  of  nature,  not  of  fancy ; 
and  we  know  this  at  the  moment  we  obey  it.  We 
meet  with  the  remembrance  that  we  are  in  the  midst 
of  brethren  who  meet  too ;  and  every  religious  so- 
ciety, though  physically  shut  in  by  its  sanctuary 
walls,  kneels  in  secret  consciousness  of  the  presence 
of  kindred  fraternities  without  number,  subdued  by 
the  same  sanctities,  and  pressing  to  the  same  end, 
not  by  human  agreement,  but  a  divine  consent.  As 
every  individual  in  a  place  of  prayer,  overhearing  the 
like  spontaneous  tones  from  many  souls  around  him, 
cannot  but  deepen  the  fervor  of  his  own;  so  each 
assembly,  feeling  that  its  neighborhood  is  studded 
over  with  similar  groups  prostrate  in  adoration  like 
itself,  sends  to  Heaven  a  more  genial  and  humaner 
cry ;  and  every  neighborhood,  mustering  to  prayer, 
thinks  of  the  busy  peals  from  clustered  churches  that 


172  THE    COMMUNION    OF    SAINTS. 

cross  and  crowd  one  another  in  each  distant  town, 
or  the  single  quiet  chime  in  every  village  of  the  land, 
and  finds  in  the  thought  a  gladder  and  a  kindlier 
praise  ;  and  every  land,  aware  that  it  is  but  one  of  a 
company  of  nations,  federally  bound  of  God  by 
irrepressible  aspirings  to  himself,  chants  its  mighty 
note  with  deeper  meaning,  as  part  of  a  universal 
symphony  heard  in  its  unity  in  Heaven  alone. 

Surely  it  is  a  glorious  thing  to  call  up,  while  we 
worship  here,  the  wide  image  of  Christendom  this 
day.  Turn  your  thoughts  away  from  the  noisy  dis- 
cord of  sects;  believe  nothing  of  their  mutual  slan- 
ders ;  forgive  the  occasional  weakness  of  superstition  ; 
and  be  not  angry  with  the  narrow  vision  of  earnest 
conviction,  that  can  see  nothing  but  its  own  truth  ; 
and  far  beneath  the  superficial  divisions  created  by 
the  intellect,  see  in  the  sabbath  spectacle  of  the  world, 
evidence  of  a  deep  and  wide-spread  union  of  hearts. 
Could  we  be  lifted  up  above  this  sphere,  and  look 
down  as  it  rolls  beneath  this  day's  sun,  and  catch  its 
murmurs  as  they  rise,  should  we  not  behold  land 
after  land  turned  into  a  Christian  shrine  ?  The  dawn, 
that  summons  mortals  from  their  sleep,  bears  them 
to-day  a  new  and  sacred  message ;  the  sunbeam 
touches  the  gates  of  ten  thousand  temples,  and  they 
burst  open  to  receive  the  record  of  countless  aspira- 
tions ;  the  morning  shoots  across  the  desert  atmos- 
phere of  a  weary  world,  strikes  on  the  stony  form  of 
giant  humanity,  and  brings  out  tones  of  celestial 
music.  In  how  many  tongues,  by  what  various 
voices,  with  what  measureless  intensity  of  love,  is 
the  name  of  Christ  breathed  forth  to-day !  What 
cries  of  penitence,  what  accents  of  trust,  what  plaints 
of  earnest  desire,  pass  away  to  God !  What  an  awful 


THE    COMMUXIOX    OF    SAINTS.  173 

array  of  faces  that  gaze  forth  into  immortality  with 
various  looks  of  terror  or  of  love !  The  vows  and 
prayers  whose  millions  crowd  the  gates  of  mercy  no 
recording  angel  could  tell,  but  only  the  infinite  mem- 
ory of  God.  Of  how  glorious  a  Church,  then,  are 
we  members  when  we  kneel  within  this  place!  in 
how  solemn  an  act  do  we  take  our  part !  with  how 
sublime  a  brotherhood  do  we  own  our  fellowship ! 

But  our  worship  here  brings  us  into  yet  nobler 
connections.  It  unites  us  by  a  chain  of  closest  sym- 
pathy with  past  generations.  In  our  helps  to  faith 
and  devotion  in  this  place,  we  avail  ourselves  of  the 
thought  and  piety  of  many  extinct  ages.  We  reve- 
rently read  those  ancient  scriptures,  which  have 
gathered  around  them  the  trust,  and  procured  the 
heart-felt  repose,  of  so  many  tribes  and  periods,  since 
prophets  and  apostles  first  gave  them  forth.  We 
sing  the  hymns  which  a  goodly  company  of  pious 
men  have  left  as  the  record  of  their  communion  with 
Heaven.  And  it  is  impossible  to  look  at  the  conse- 
crated names  of  those  '  sweet  singers'  of  Christendom, 
without  feeling  ennobled  by  their  communion,  and 
even  astonished  at  our  sympathy  with  them.  Do  not 
we,  the  living,  take  up,  in  adoration  and  prayer,  the 
thoughts  of  the  dead,  and  feel  them  divinely  true  ? 
Do  they  not  come  forth,  as  if  fresh-coined  from  our 
own  hearts  ?  Indeed,  could  we  ourselves  so  faith- 
fully utter  the  consciousness  of  our  inner  being,  or 
shape  so  interpreting  a  voice  for  our  secret  life? 
What  an  impressive  testimony  this  to  the  sameness 
of  our  nature  through  every  age,  and  the  immortal 
perseverance  of  its  holier  affections !  The  language 
o"  their  confessions,  their  struggles,  their  desires, 
speaks  our  own;  the  light  that  gladdened  them, 
15* 


174  THE    COMMUNION    OF    SAINTS. 

shines  now  upon  our  hearts  ;  and  the  mists  they 
could  not  penetrate,  brood  now  upon  our  path.  There 
is  the  choice  minstrel  of  Israel,  true  alike  to  the  spirit 
of  mourning  or  of  joy ;  there  are  the  venerable  fathers 
of  the  ancient  church,  whose  vespers,  chanted  cen- 
turies ago,  will  suit  this  night  as  well ;  there  is  the 
adamantine  yet  genial  Luther,  telling,  with  the 
severity  of  an  eye-witness,  the  awfulness  of  judg- 
ment ;  there  is  the  noble  Milton,  breathing  his  sweet 
and  rugged  music  out  of  darkness ;  there  is.  the 
afflicted  Cowper,  sending  out  the  tenderest  strains 
from  his  benighted  spirit ;  with  an  attendant  multi- 
tude of  the  faithful,  —  the  confessor,  the  exile,  the 
missionary,  —  a  chorus  of  sublime  voices,  with  which 
it  is  a  sacred  privilege  to  be  in  harmony.  And  these 
are  not  merely  the  accents  of  the  past,  but  the  anthem 
of  the  sainted  dead,  —  the  strains  of  immortals  that 
look  back  upon  their  toils,  and  behold  us  singing 
their  songs  of  sadness  here,  while  they  have  already 
learned  the  melodies  of  everlasting  joy.  Blessed 
communion  of  earth  with  Heaven !  making  us  truly 
one  family,  below,  above  ;  and  rendering  us  fellow- 
citizens  with  the  saints,  and  of  the  very  household  of 
God! 

And  soon  we  too  shall  drop  the  note  of  earthly 
aspiration,  and  join  that  upper  anthem  of  diviner 
love.  The  hour  cometh,  when  we  shall  cease  the 
mournful  cry  with  which  earth  must  ever  pray  to 
Heaven,  and  grief  ask  pity  to  its  tears,  and  the 
tempted  call  for  help  in  the  crisis  of  danger,  and  the 
laboring  will  implore  a  freshened  strength.  Exiles 
as  yet  from  the  spirit  of  unanxious  joy,  we  catch 
but  the  echoes  of  that  heavenly  peace,  and  yield 
response  but  faint  and  low.  Yet  even  now  the  free 


THE    COMMUNION    OF    SAINTS.  175 

heart  of  the  happy  and  triumphant  shall  be  ours,  in 
proportion  as,  we  are  true  to  the  condition  of  faithful 
service,  which  alone  can  make  us  one  with  them. 
The  communion  of  saints  brings  to  us  their  conflict 
first,  their  blessings  afterwards ;  those  who  will  not 
with  much  patience  strive  with  the  evil,  can  have  no 
dear  fellowship  with  the  good ;  we  must  weep  their 
tears,  ere  we  can  win  their  peace.  This  sorrowful 
condition  once  accepted,  the  sympathies  of  Heaven 
are  not  slow  to  arise  within  the  soul ;  it  is  the  tension 
of  sacred  toil,  that  on  the  touch  of  every  breath  of 
life  brings  music  from  the  chords  of  love.  And  then 
the  tone  that  here  sinks  in  the  silence  of  death,  shall 
there  swell  into  an  immortal's  fuller  praise.  We 
shall  leave  it  to  others  to  take  up  the  supplicating 
strain ;  shall  join  the  emancipated  brotherhood  of 
the  departed ;  and  in  our  turn  look  down  on  the 
outstretched  hands  of  our  children,  waiting  our  wel- 
come and  embrace.  O !  may  the  Great  Father,  in 
his  own  fit  time,  unite  in  one  the  parted  family  of 
heaven  and  earth! 


XIV. 

CHRIST'S  TREATMENT   OF   GUILT. 
LUKE  y.  8. 

DEPART   FROM   ME ;    FOR   I   AM   A   SINFUL   MAN,    0   LORD  ! 

WHEN  Simeon,  on  the  verge  of  life,  uttered  his 
parting  hymn  within  the  temple,  he  told  Mary,  with 
the  infant  Jesus  in  his  arms,  that,  by  that  child,  '  the 
thoughts  of  many  hearts  should  be  revealed.'  Never 
was  prophecy  more  true;  nor  ever  perhaps  the  mis- 
sion of  our  religion  more  faithfully  defined.  For 
wherever  it  has  spread,  it  has  operated  like  a  new 
and  diviner  conscience  to  the  world ;  imparting  to  the 
human  mind  a  profounder  insight  into  itself;  opening 
to  its  consciousness  fresh  powers  and  better  aspira- 
tions; and  penetrating  it  with  a  sense  of  imperfection, 
a  concern  for  the  moral  frailties  of  the  will,  charac- 
teristic of  no  earlier  age.  The  spirit  of  religious 
penitence,  the  solemn  confession  of  unfaithfulness,  the 
prayer  for  mercy,  are  the  growth  of  our  nature  trained 
in  the  school  of  Christ.  The  pure  image  of  his  mind, 
as  it  has  passed  from  land  to  land,  has  taught  men 
more  of  their  own  hearts  than  all  the  ancient  aphor- 
isms of  self-knowledge;  has  inspired  more  sadness  at 
the  evil,  more  noble  hope  for  the  good  that  is  hidden 
there;  and  has  placed  within  reach  of  even  the  igno- 
rant, the  neglected,  and  the  young,  severer  principles 
of  self-scrutiny  than  philosophy  had  ever  attained. 


CHRIST'S  TREATMENT  OF  GUILT.  177 

The  radiance  of  so  great  a  sanctity  has  deepened  the 
shades  of  conscious  sin.  The  savage  convert,  who 
before  knew  nothing  more  sacred  than  revenge  and 
war,  is  brought  to  Jesus,  and,  as  he  listens  to  that 
voice,  feels  the  stain  of  blood  growing  distinct  upon 
his  soul.  The  voluptuary,  never  before  disturbed 
from  his  self-indulgence,  comes  within  the  atmos- 
phere of  Christ's  spirit;  and  it  is  as  if  a  gale  of  heaven 
fanned  his  fevered  brow,  and  convinced  him  that  he 
is  not  in  health.  The  ambitious  priest,  revolving 
plans  for  using  men's  passions  as  tools  of  his  aggran- 
dizement, starts  to  find  himself  the  disciple  of  one 
who,  when  the  people  would  have  made  him  king, 
fled  direct  to  solitude  and  prayer.  The  forward 
child  blushes  to  think  how  little  there  is  in  him  of  the 
infant  meekness  which  Jesus  praised ;  and  feels  that, 
had  he  been  there,  he  must  have  missed  the  benedic- 
tion, or,  more  bitter  still,  have  wept  to  know  it  mis- 
applied. Nay,  so  deep  and  solemn  did  the  sense 
of  guilt  become  under  the  influence  of  Christian 
thoughts,  that  at  length  the  overburthened  heart  of 
fervent  times  could  endure  the  weight  no  longer;  the 
Confessional  arose,  to  relieve  it  and  restore  a  periodic 
peace ;  and  it  became  the  chief  object  of  the  widest 
sacerdotal  order  which  the  world  has  ever  seen,  to 
soothe  the  sobs,  and  listen  to  the  whispered  record,  of 
human  penitence.  Cities,  too,  as  if  conscious  of  their 
corruption,  bid  the  silent  minster  rise  amid  their 
streets,  where,  instead  of  the  short  daily  or  sabbath 
service,  unceasing,  eternal  orisons  might  be  said  for 
sin ;  where  the  door  might  open  to  the  touch  all  day, 
and  the  lamp  be  seen  beneath  the  vault  by  night,  and 
the  passer  by,  caught  by  the  low  chant,  might  be 
tempted  to  interrupt  the  chase  of  vanity  without,  for 


178  CHRIST'S  TREATMEXT  OF  GUILT. 

the  peace  of  prayer  within.  And  so,  in  every  ancient 
village  church  of  Europe,  there  is  a  corner  that  has 
been  moistened  with  the  burning  tears  of  many  gen- 
erations, and  witness  to  the  confessions  and  griefs 
that  prove  the  children's  conscience  and  affections  to 
be  such  as  their  Father's  were ;  and  the  cathedral 
aisle,  emblem  of  the  mighty  heart  of  Christendom, 
has  for  centuries  been  swelled  with  the  plaint  of  a 
repentant  music,  shedding  its  sighs  aloft  into  the  spire, 
as  if  to  reach  and  kiss  the  feet  of  God.  In  private 
dwellings,  too,  from  the  hearts  of  parents  and  of 
children,  every  morning  and  evening  for  ages  past  has 
seen  many  sad  and  lowly  prayers  ascend.  Every- 
where the  Christian  mind  proclaims  its  need  of  mercy, 
and  bends  beneath  the  oppression  of  its  guilt;  and 
since  Jesus  began  to  'reveal  the  thoughts  of  many 
hearts,'  Christendom,  with  clasped  hands,  has  fallen 
at  his  feet  and  cried,  '  We  are  sinful  men,  O  Lord ! ' 
In  nurturing  this  sentiment,  in  producing  this 
solemn  estimate  of  moral  evil  and  quick  perception 
of  its  existence,  the  religion  of  Christ  does  but  per- 
petuate the  influence  of  his  personal  ministry,  and 
give  prominence,  on  the  theatre  of  the  world,  to  the 
feature  which  singularly  distinguished  his  life,  viz. 
his  treatment  of  the  guilty.  It  is  as  if  he  dwelt  among 
us  still,  and  we  saw  him  vexed  and  saddened  by  our 
evil  passions,  and  travelled  with  him  on  the  way,  and 
felt  his  eye  of  gentleness  and  purity  upon  our  homes, 
and  he  told  us  that  '  we  know  not  what  spirit  we  are 
of,'  and  by  these  very  words  caused  us  to  know  it 
instantly.  Nor  can  we  obtain  any  juster  and  deeper 
impressions  of  the  temptations  of  life,  and  the  ten- 
dencies of  all  wrong  desires,  than  by  seizing  that 
view  of  moral  evil,  which  dictated  the  mercies  and 
the  severities  of  his  lips  and  life. 


CHRIST'S  TREATMENT  OF  GUILT.  179 

He  lived  amid  dark  passions  and  in  evil  days. 
Profligates  and  outcasts  were  near  him ;  the  ambi- 
tious and  ignorant  were  his  disciples ;  hypocrites  con- 
spired against  him  ;  and  treachery  was  ready  to  be 
their  tool.  He  had  to  encounter  malignant  designs 
directed  against  himself,  and  selfish  arts  of  delusion 
practised  on  the  people ;  to  deal  at  one  time  with  the 
despised  but  affectionate  penitent;  at  another,  with 
recently-detected  shame ;  and  again,  with  artifice  and 
insincere  pretension  hardened  into  system,  and  ad- 
ministered by  established  authority.  And  in  all 
is  visible  the  same  spirit  of  blended  sanctity  and 
humanity,  adapting  itself,  with  versatile  power,  to 
every  emergency. 

The  guilty  passions  of  his  countrymen  continually 
approached  himself.  They  haunted  this  whole  min- 
istry, and  hated  him  as  soon  as  disciples  began  to  love. 
They  mixed  with  the  multitudes  whom  he  taught 
upon  the  hills ;  and  he  saw  their  evil  eye  peering  on 
him  and  watching  his  words  from  amid  the  throngs 
that  flocked  round  him  in  the  temple.  But  they 
never  embarrassed  the  flow  of  his  dignified  utterance, 
or  fluttered  his  spirit  with  a  moment's  resentment. 
On  occasion  of  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  —  that 
annual  jubilee  of  Jerusalem's  heart,  when  the  trees 
were  robbed  of  their  branches  to  turn  the  street  into 
an  olive-ground,  and  make  the  city  as  verdant  as  the 
hills,  —  all  was  done  that  enmity  could  effect,  to  over- 
cast his  share  of  the  national  joy,  to  silence  his  teach- 
ings to  the  wondering  people,  and  stop  his  efforts  to 
extract  from  the  picturesque  and  festive  rites  some 
lesson  of  gladder  tidings  and  deeper  wisdom.  He 
saw  amid  the  crowd  the  officers  sent  to  take  him, 
the  wily  steps  and  hesitating  wills  with  which  they 


180  CHRIST'S  TREATMENT  OF  GUILT. 

tracked  his  wanderings  over  the  temple  courts,  the 
mutual  whispers  dropping  into  fixed  attention  with 
which  they  listened  to  him  here  and  there.  He 
stepped  forward,  and  they  recoiled,  as  he  told  them, 
with  an  air  of  divinest  quietude,  that  he  should  be 
there  yet  longer,  but  no  hand  would  touch  him,  and 
then  he  should  be  sequestered  in  a  place  which  their 
violence  could  not  reach.  And  there,  day  after  day, 
they  saw  him  still  gladdening  attentive  hearts,  and 
felt  him  subduing  their  own,  so  that  again  and  again 
they  ceased  to  be  his  enemies  and  became  his  follow- 
ers ;  till  on  the  last  great  day,  they  beheld  him  stand- 
ing aloft  on  the  precipitous  edge  of  Moriah's  rock, 
watching  the  procession  that  climbed  with  the  water- 
bowl  from  Siloam's  stream  below,  and  as  it  entered 
with  its  pure  libation,  heard  him  pronounce  that 
solemn  invitation,  '  If  any  man  thirsts,  let  him  come 
unto  me  and  drink  of  living  waters.'  They  returned, 
and  the  attestation  burst  from  their  lips,  '  Never  man 
spake  like  this  man.' 

Nor  was  it  merely  that  he  regarded  these  men  as 
the  poor  menials  of  others'  designs,  —  hirelings  of 
guiltier  men.  For  the  same  impersonal  tranquillity 
appears  when  he  is  in  contact  with  the  original  agents, 
who  endeavored  to  crush  his  cause,  and  actually  com- 
passed his  death.  Whatever  the  agony  of  Gethsem- 
ane  may  have  been-,  it  was  no  agony  of  resentment ; 
the  controversy  of  that  bitter  hour  was  with  the 
Father  whom  he  loved,  not  with  enemies  whom  he 
feared.  Indeed,  the  nearer  these  enemies  came, 
the  more  did  the  serene  power  of  his  spirit  rise. 
After  those  convulsive  prayers  which  had  pierced 
the  midnight,  it  seemed  as  if  angel-thoughts  had 
stolen  in  to  strengthen  him.  At  the  moment  when 


CUEIST'S    TREATMENT    OF    GUILT.  181 

the  tramp  of  feet  was  first  heard  upon  the  bridge  of 
Kedron,  and  the  torches  as  they  passed,  flashed  upon 
its  rapid  waters,  he  was  prostrate  in  a  devotion  from 
which  tears  and  struggles  had  now  passed  away. 
When,  later  still,  the  hum  of  approaching  voices 
became  distinct,  and  the  lights  gleamed  nearer  and 
nearer  through  the  trees,  he  was  bending  over  his 
waking  disciples,  who  overheard  him  breathing  the 
wish,  that  they  could  indeed  sleep  on  through  the 
severities  of  that  dreadful  day,  and  be  saved  from 
the  faithless  desertion,  the  memory  of  which  would 
be  ever  bitter.  And  when  at  length  the  armed  band 
confronts  them,  and  he  startles  them  by  stepping 
forth  in  answer  to  his  name;  when  the  kiss  of  be- 
trayal has  been  given,  and  the  momentary  affray 
which  Peter  had  challenged  has  been  stopped  by  his 
healing  power;  when  all  are  moving  from  the  place 
with  sullen  haste, — the  priests,  doubtless  eager  to  be 
back  within  the  city  before  it  can  be  discovered  by 
what  nocturnal  exploit  they,  the  conservators  of  law 
and  right,  have  sullied  their  dignity,  —  Jesus  dives  at 
once  into  their  conscience,  flurried  already  with  fear 
and  guilt,  and  asks,  why  such  holy  men,  whom  often 
he  has  seen  listening  to  his  daily  teachings,  should 
choose  so  ruffian  a  way,  and  so  strange  an  hour,  for  a 
deed  of  public  justice  ?  Throughout  the  scenes  which 
followed,  you  well  know  how  Jesus  maintained  the 
same  majestic  and  unruffled  spirit;  seeming  nobler 
with  every  indignity,  and  of  prompter  self-forgetful- 
ness  with  every  added  suffering;  yet  visibly  agitating 
every  party  before  whom  he  was  brought,  with  the 
consciousness  of  crime  and  horror  in  the  transactions 
of  which  he  was  the  forgiving  victim.  Look  where 
we  may,  it  is  clear  that  resentment  had  not  the 
16 


182  CHRIST'S  TREATMENT  OF  GUILT. 

faintest  share  in  Christ's  feeling  towards  wrong;  that 
it  was  directed  against  himself,  afforded  no  induce- 
ment for  a  severer  or  more  excited  estimate  of  its 
enormity.  He  put  it  at  a  distance  from  him ;  its 
relations  to  its  authors  and  to  others  impressed  him 
more  than  the  suffering  it  brought  upon  himself;  and 
every  one  must  perceive  that  his  eye  is  fixed,  not 
on  its  cruelty,  but  on  its  awfulness,  its  blindness,  its 
guilt. 

Yet  did  our  Lord  give  no  sanction  to  the  morbid 
doctrine  of  a  sentimental  fatalism,  which  forbids  us 
ever  to  be  angry  with  the  wicked,  talks  whiningly 
of  our  common  frailty,  draws  an  immoral  comfort 
from  God's  way  of  educing  good  from  evil,  and  com- 
prises all  possible  cases  of  duty  to  wrongdoers  under 
one  formula,  '  Pity  and  forgive.'  In  nothing  do  we 
notice  the  depth  and  truth  of  his  moral  perception 
more  clearly  than  in  its  different  treatment  of  vice  in 
its  several  forms  and  stages.  When  he  comes  before 
'  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  Hypocrites,'  we  do  not  hear 
the  tones  of  forgiveness,  the  pleadings  of  the  mild 
apologist  for  human  infirmity,  the  effeminate  offer  of 
a  futile  pity.  He  pours  forth  an  intense  stream  of 
natural  indignation,  and  blights  them  with  the  flash 
of  a  terrible  invective;  he  tears  the  veil  from  every 
foul  purpose,  and  with  severe  justice  brands  every 
deed  with  its  own  black  name.  Here,  exposure,  not 
compassion,  is  the  proper  impulse  and  duty  of  a  noble 
mind;  for  the  people  must  be  deluded  no  more,  their 
reason  perplexed  with  wretched  quibbles,  and  their 
too-trusting  conscience  corrupted  by  the  sophistries 
of  sin.  It  were  poor  generosity,  from  tenderness  to  a 
selfish  faction,  to  let  the  good  heart  of  the  nation  die. 
Nay,  even  for  these  deceivers  themselves,  this  expres- 


CHRIST'S  TREATMENT  OF  GUILT.  183 

sion  of  moral  anger  was  precisely  the  most  salutary 
appeal  For  it  echoed  the  secret  sentence  of  their 
own  hearts,  with  which  compassion  would  have  been 
altogether  discordant.  The  self-condemnation,  only 
whispered  before,  it  sent  in  thunder  through  their  hol- 
low souls;  bringing  many  a  hearer  to  tremble  at  the 
shock,  who  would  have  scoffed  at  pity  as  a  weak 
and  puling  thing.  This  principle,  of  simply  giving 
voice  to  the  present  sentiments  of  the  conscience,  and 
administering  the  feelings  for  which  its  natural  justice 
was  making  a  demand,  Jesus  appears  intuitively  to 
have  followed  in  all  his  dealings  with  the  vicious. 
When  he  reclined  at  the  table  of  the  Pharisee,  and 
shocked  him  by  allowing  a  woman  who  had  been  a 
sinner  to  find  admission  on  the  plea  of  discipleship, 
and  the  new  reverential  affections  of  her  nature  broke 
forth  in  passionate  gratitude,  he  gave  no  check  and 
no  rebuke,  nor  simply  a  cautious  sanction.  The  con- 
victions, which  rebuke  serves  to  awaken,  were  already 
there  ;  to  reproach  would  be  to  crush  the  fallen.  She 
had  discovered  the  depth  of  her  misery,  and  yearned 
for  the  profound  compassion  suited  to  so  great  a 
woe.  Jesus  knew  that  one  who  had  been  stricken  by 
a  love  so  pure  and  penitential  as  hers,  needed  only  to 
have  that  love  fostered  and  trained  to  act;  and  so, 
casting  himself  with  a  bold  faith  on  the  capacities  of 
a  truly  melted  soul,  he  declared  her  sins  forgiven. 
But  where,  again,  no  such  penitence  appeared,  and  the 
resort  to  him  was  not  spontaneous,  but  compulsory, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  woman  taken  in  adultery,  he  ob- 
served a  striking  neutrality  of  treatment.  To  a  mind 
heated  with  so  dreadful  and  public  a  shame,  to 
administer  reproach  would  be  cruelty,  to  give  conso- 
lation would  be  danger ;  and  he  simply  wards  off  the 


184  CUBIST'S  TREATMENT  OF  GUILT. 

savage  penalties  of  the  law,  and  turns  all  his  direct 
dealings  upon  her  foul  and  sanctimonious  informers. 
Their  conscience  persuades  them  that  he  knows  their 
secret  history,  and  they  skulk  away,  the  accused  in- 
stead of  the  accusers ;  while  on  the  people  that  stand 
by  is  impressed  the  awful  truth,  that  sinners  are  not 
fit  to  judge  of  sin.  The  blindness  which  is  induced 
by  all  deliberate  injury  to  our  moral  nature,  and 
which  thickens  its  film  as  the  habit  grows,  is  one  of 
the  most  appalling  expressions  of  the  justice  of  God. 
Moral  evil  is  the  only  thing  in  his  creation  of  which 
it  is  decreed,  that  the  more  we  are  familiar  with  it, 
the  less  shall  we  know  of  it.  The  mind  that  is  rich 
in  holiness  and  the  humanities,  appreciates  every 
temptation,  computes  the  force  of  every  passion,  and 
discerns  the  degradation  of  every  vice,  with  a  pre- 
cision and  clearness  unknown  to  the  adept  in  wrong. 
When  that  wretched  woman  stood  alone  and  con- 
founded before  Christ,  how  little  did  she  know  of  her 
own  abased  and  abject  mind,  how  much  less  of  the 
majestic  being  before  her,  whose  steady  eye,  as  it 
looked  upon  her,  she  could  not  meet!  Yet  how  vividly, 
and  with  what  results  of  considerate  yet  cautious 
sympathy,  did  the  disorder  of  her  moral  nature  pre- 
sent itself  to  him  who  knew  no  defilement!  Like 
the  pure  and  silent  stars  that  look  down  by  night 
upon  the  foulness  and  the  din  of  cities,  his  heavenly 
spirit  gazed  direct  into  the  turbid  hiding-places  of  sin. 
He  saw  it,  indeed,  simply  as  it  will  see  itself  in  retro- 
spect; not  perhaps  any  retrospect  in  this  life;  but 
such  as  may  be  inevitable,  when  the  exchange  of 
worlds  takes  place ;  when  the  urgency  of  pursuit  and 
the  distractions  of  amusement  shall  have  ceased,  and 
left  us  alone  with  our  characters  and  our  God;  when, 


CHRIST'S  TREATMENT  OF  GUILT.  185 

one  order  of  employments  being  ended,  and  the  other 
not  yet  commenced,  there  comes  the  appointed  pause 
for  thought  and  judgment ;  and  having  waved  the 
last  adieu,  we  flit  away  along  that  noiseless  journey, 
on  which  we  bear  with  us  only  the  memory  of  the 
Past,  to  knock  at  the  awful  gates  of  the  unopened 
Future. 

What  that  retrospect  may  be,  it  is  fearful,  but  not 
impossible,  to  think.  To  aid  the  thought,  it  has  been 
remarked  by  one  of  the  most  distinguished  physical 
philosophers  of  our  own  day,  that  no  atmospheric 
vibration  ever  becomes  extinct ;  that  the  pulses  of 
speech,  when  they  have  done  their  work  and  become 
to  our  ear  inaudible,  pass  in  waves  away,  but  wander 
still,  reflected  hither  and  thither,  through  the  regions 
of  the  air  eternally.  He  conceives  that,  as  the  atmos- 
phere comprises  still  within  itself  the  distinct  trace  of 
every  sound  impressed  on  any  portion  of  it,  —  as 
thus  the  record  indestructibly  exists,  —  we  have  only 
to  suffer  a  change  of  position,  and  receive  the  en- 
dowment of  an  acuter  sense,  to  hear  again  every  idle 
word  that  we  have  spoken,  and  every  sigh  that  we 
have  caused.  The  truth  is,  that  already,  and  within 
the  limits  of  our  mental  nature,  there  is  a  power  that 
will  effect  all  this  ;  it  is  fully  within  the  scope  of  our 
natural  faculties  of  association  and  memory.  It  may 
be  doubted  whether  any  idea  once  in  the  mind  is 
ever  lost,  and  past  recall ;  it  may  drop,  indeed,  into 
the  gulf  of  forgotten  things,  and  the  waves  of  succes- 
sive thought  roll  over  it ;  but  there  are  in  nature 
possible  and  even  inevitable  convulsions  which  dis- 
place the  waters,  heave  up  the  deep,  and  disentomb 
whatever  may  be  fair  or  hideous  there.  There  needs 
only  that  associated  objects  should  be  presented,  and 

16* 


186  CHRIST'S  TREATMENT  OF  GUILT. 

the  whole  past,  its  most  trivial  features  even,  —  the 
remnant  of  a  school-boy  task,  or  the  mere  snatches  of 
a  dream,  —  will  rise  up  to  view.     Make  but  a  pil- 
grimage to  the  scenes  of  your  early  days,  when  more 
than  half  of  life  is  gone ;   wander  again  over  the 
peaceful  fields,  and  stand  on  the  brink  of  the  yet 
gliding  stream,  that  were  the  witnesses  of  youthful 
sports  and  cares;   and  are  they  not   the  records  of 
them  too  ?     Does  not  remembrance  seem  inspired, 
and  commissioned  to  render  back  the  dead  ?     And 
do  they  not  come  crowding  on  your  sense,  —  faces 
and  voices,  and  moving  shapes,  and  the  tones  of  bells, 
and  the  very  feelings  too  which  these  things  awak- 
ened once  ?    It  is  remarkable  how  slight  a  suggestion 
is  occasionally  sufficient  to  bring  back  vast  trains  of 
emotion.     There  are  cases  in  which  some  particular 
function  of  the  memory  acquires  an  exquisite  sen- 
sibility ;  and  usually,  as  if  God  would  warn  us  what 
must  happen  when  our  moral  nature  is  divorced  from 
the  physical,  it   is   the  memory  of  conscience   that 
maintains   this    preternatural   watch.     In    many   an 
hospital  of  mental  disease  (as  it  is  called),  you  have 
doubtless  seen  a  melancholy  being  pacing  to  and  fro 
with  rapid  strides,  and  lost  to  every  thing  around  ; 
wringing  his  hands  in  incommunicable  suffering,  and 
letting  fall  a  low  mutter  rising  quickly  into  the  shrill 
cry;  his  features  cut  with  the  graver  of  sharp  an- 
guish ;  his  eyelids  drooping  (for  he  never  sleeps),  and 
showering  ever  scalding  tears.     It  is  the  maniac  of 
remorse ;  possibly,  indeed,  made  wretched  by  merely 
imaginary  crimes  ;  but  just  as  possibly  maddened  by 
too  true  a  recollection,  and  what  the  world  would 
esteem  too  scrupulous  a  conscience.     Listen  to  him, 
and  you  will  often  be  surprised  into  fresh  pity,  to  find 


CHEIST'S  TBEATMENT  OF  GUILT.  187 

how  seemingly  slight  are  the  offences,  —  injuries 
perhaps  of  mere  unripened  thought,  —  which  feed 
the  fires,  and  whirl  the  lash,  of  this  incessant  woe. 
He  is  the  dread  type  of  Hell.  He  is  absolutely 
sequestered  (as  any  mind  may  be  hereafter),  incar- 
cerated alone  with  his  memories  of  sin  ;  and  that  is 
all.  He  is  unconscious  of  objects  and  unaware  of 
time ;  and  every  guilty  soul  may  find  itself,  likewise, 
standing  alone  in  a  theatre  peopled  with  the  collected 
images  of  the  ills  that  he  hath  done ;  and,  turn  where 
he  may,  the  features  he  has  made  sad  with  grief,  the 
eyes  he  has  lighted  with  passion,  the  infant  faces  he 
has  suffused  with  needless  tears,  stare  upon  him  with 
insufferable  fixedness.  And  if  thus  the  past  be  truly 
indestructible ;  —  if  thus  its  fragments  may  be  re- 
gathered,  if  its  details  of  evil  thought  and  act  may  be 
thus  brought  together,  and  fused  into  one  big  agony, 
—  why,  it  may  be  left  to  '  fools '  to  '  make  a  mock 
at  sin.' 


XV. 

THE   STRENGTH   OF   THE    LONELY. 
JOHN  xvi.  32. 

BEHOLD  THE  HOUR  COMETH,  TEA,  IS  NOW  COME,  THAT  YE  SHALL  BE 
SCATTERED,  EVERY  MAN  TO  HIS  OWN,  AND  SHALL  LEAVE  ME  ALONE  ; 
AND  YET  I  AM  NOT  ALONE,  BECAUSE  THE  FATHER  IS  WITH  ME. 

THE  different  degrees  of  self-reliance  felt  by  differ- 
ent minds  occasion  some  of  the  most  marked  diver- 
sities in  the  moral  characters  of  men.  There  is  a 
species  of  dependence  upon  others  altogether  distinct 
from  empty-minded  imitation  ;  implying  no  incapa- 
city of  thought,  no  imbecility  of  judgment,  but  often 
connected  with  the  best  attributes  of  genius  and  the 
choicest  fruits  of  cultivation.  It  is  a  tendency  which 
has  its  root  in  the  sensitive,  not  in  the  intellectual  part 
of  our  nature ;  and  grows,  not  from  the  shallowness 
of  the  reason,  but  from  the  depth  of  the  affections. 
It  arises,  indeed,  from  a  disproportion  between  these 
two  departments  of  the  mind  ;  and  would  disappear, 
if  force  were  either  added  to  the  understanding,  or 
deducted  from  the  feelings.  It  is  the  dependence  of 
an  affectionate  mind,  capable,  it  may  be,  of  mani- 
festing great  power,  but  trembling  to  feel  itself 
alone;  —  of  a  mind  that  has  a  natural  affinity  for 
sympathy,  and  cannot  endure  its  loss  or  its  postpone- 
ment ;  but  on  whatever  course  of  thought  or  action 
the  faculties  may  launch  forth,  finds  them  insensibly 


THE    STttEXGTH    OF    THE    LONELY.  189 

tending  towards  it  for  shelter.  This  temper  is  not  to 
be  confounded  with  the  vulgar  and  selfish  craving 
after  applause,  that  has  no  test  of  truth  and  right  but 
the  voice  of  a  multitude,  and  will  sell  its  conscience 
to  buy  off  a  frown.  The  feeling  to  which  I  refer, 
cares  not  for  numbers  or  for  praise ;  it  deprecates 
nothing  but  perfect  solitude.  It  has  but  one  reser- 
vation in  its  pursuit  of  truth  and  reverence  for  duty, 
that  they  shall  not  drift  it  away  from  every  human 
support.  Place  near  it  some  one  approving  and  fra- 
ternal heart,  and  its  self-respect  rises  at  once ;  it  can 
listen  unabashed  to  scorn  ;  it  can  stand  up  against  a 
menace  with  dignity  ;  it  can  thrust  aside  resistance 
with  energy.  Lay  to  rest  the  trembling  spirit  of  hu- 
manity within,  and  the  diviner  impulses  of  the  soul 
will  start  to  their  supremacy. 

This  state  of  mind  may  be  illustrated  by  reference 
to  its  extreme  opposite  ;  and  the  contrast  may  bring 
out  in  clearer  light  the  strength  and  weaknesses  of 
both.  There  are  persons  to  be  occasionally  found 
whose  minds  appear  to  perform  their  operations  as  if 
they  were  in  empty  space" ;  who  reflect,  and  plan, 
and  feel  in  secret ;  of  whose  processes  of  thought  no 
one  knows  any  thing  more  than  happens  to  be  indi- 
cated by  the  result ;  who  look  on  men  and  events 
only  as  instruments  for  the  execution  of  their  de- 
signs ;  who  are  little  damped  by  universal  discour- 
agement, or  elated  by  universal  approbation  ;  and 
rarely  modify  an  opinion  or  repent  of  a  feeling,  how- 
ever singular  may  be  their  position  in  maintaining  it.. 
If  others  agree  with  their  designs,  it  is  so  much  force 
to  be  reckoned  in  their  favor ;  if  they  disagree,  it  is 
so  much  resistance  to  be  overcome.  Human  ties  are 
formed,  and  their  energies  are  not  improved ;  are 


190  THE    STBENGTH    OF    THE    LOXELY. 

broken,  and  their  energies  are  not  weakened.  In 
trouble,  they  apply  themselves  so  promptly  to  the 
remedy,  that,  when  you  offer  your  sympathy,  it  is 
not  wanted ;  they  are  fond  of  the  maxim,  '  a  good 
man  is  satisfied  from  himself;'  —  and  so  truly  act 
upon  it,  that  the  genial  heart  and  helping  hand  in- 
stinctively shrink  back  from  their  hard  complacent 
presence. 

Each  of  these  two  forms  of  human  character  has 
a  certain  species  of  power  of  its  own.  He  who  is 
independent  of  sympathy  is  remarkable  for  power 
over  himself.  In  speculation,  his  mind  operates  free 
from  all  disturbing  forces ;  he  goes  apart  with  his 
subject  of  contemplation,  surveys  it  with  a  serene 
eye,  converses  with  it  as  an  abstraction,  having  no 
concern  with  any  living  interest.  His  faculties  obey 
his  summons,  and  perform  their  task  with  vigor, 
paralyzed  by  no  anxiety,  ruffled  by  no  doubt,  never 
lingering  to  plead  awhile  for  some  dear  old  error 
before  it  go,  nor  pausing  to  take  the  leap  to  truth 
entirely  new.  In  action,  his  volitions  are  executed 
at  once ;  nothing  intervenes  (assuming  him  to  be  a 
man  of  honest  purpose)  between  his  seeing  a  course 
of  wisdom  and  rectitude,  and  his  taking  it ;  he  yields 
nothing  to  his  own  habits ;  he  waits  for  no  man's 
support ;  if  they  yield  it,  it  will  show  their  good 
sense ;  if  they  withhold  it,  it  is  the  worse  for  them- 
selves. He  scorns  concession  either  to  others  or  to 
himself;  not  in  truth  comprehending  the  temptation 
to  it.  The  past  and  the  human  have  no  power  over 
him ;  he  needs  no  gathering  of  strength  to  tear  him- 
self away ;  all  his  roots  strike  at  once  into  his  own 
present  convictions ;  and  whatever  opposition  may 
beat  on  him  from  the  elements  around,  does  but  serve 


THE  STRENGTH  OF  THE  LONELY.          191 

to  harden  them  to  rock,  and  fix  him  there  with  im- 
mutable tenacity. 

On  the  other  hand,  he  who  is  dependent  on  human 
sympathy  acquires  far  greater  power  over  others.  He 
reflects  and  reciprocates  the  emotions  of  other  minds ; 
he  understands  their  prejudices  ;  he  is  no  stranger  to 
their  weaknesses  ;  he  does  not  stare  at  their  impulses, 
like  a  being  too  sublime  to  comprehend  them.  He 
may  not  obtain  that  kind  of  distant  respect  which  is 
yielded  to  the  man  of  cold  but  acute  and  confident 
intellect  ;  a  respect  which  is  founded  in  fear,  which 
suppresses  opposition  without  winning  trust,  which 
silences  objectors  without  relieving  their  objections, 
that  unsatisfactory  respect  which  we  feel  when  con- 
scious that  another  is  right,  without  perceiving  ivhere 
it  is  that  we  are  wrong.  But  he  may  earn  that  better 
power,  which  arises  from  profound  and  affectionate 
knowledge  of  the  human  heart.  There  is  no  human 
being  to  whom  we  look  with  so  true  a  faith,  as  to 
him  who  shows  himself  deep-read  in  the  mysteries 
within  us ;  who  seems  to  have  dwelt  where  Omni- 
science only  had  access,  and  traced  momentary  lines 
of  feeling  whose  rapid  flash  our  own  eye  could 
scarcely  follow;  who  put  into  words  weaknesses 
which  we  had  hardly  dared  to  confess  in  thought ; 
who  appears  to  have  trembled  with  our  own  anxie- 
ties, and  wept  our  very  tears.  This  initiation  into 
the  interior  nature  is  the  quality  which,  above  all 
others,  gives  one  mind  power  over  another.  If  it 
comes  upon  us  from  the  living  tones  of  a  friendly 
voice,  we  listen  as  to  the  breathings  of  inspiration ; 
if  it  act  on  us  only  from  the  pages  of  a  book,  the 
enchantment  is  hardly  less  potent.  That  a  being, 
distant  and  unknown,  perhaps  departed,  should  have 


192  THE    STRENGTH    OF    THE    LONELY. 

so  penetrated  our  subtlest  emotions,  and  caught  our 
most  transient  attitudes  of  thought,  should  have  so 
detected  our  sophistries  of  conscience,  and  witnessed 
the  miseries  of  our  temptations,  and  known  the  sa- 
credness  of  our  affections,  that  we  appear  revealed 
anew  even  to  ourselves,  truly  seems  the  greatest  of 
the  triumphs  of  genius.  It  is  a  triumph  peculiar  to 
those  who  love  the  sympathies  of  their  kind,  and, 
because  they  love  them,  instinctively  appreciate  and 
understand  them.  It  is  essentially  the  triumph  which 
Christ  won  when  the  minions  of  tyranny  and  hypoc- 
risy shrunk  back,  from  him  in  awe,  saying,  '  Never 
man  spake  like  this  man.' 

With  this  quality,  however,  great  feebleness  of  will, 
and  even  total  prostration  of  moral  power,  may  some- 
times be  found  combined ;  and  we  may  almost  say, 
the  greater  the  intellectual  endowments,  the  more 
likely  is  this  to  be  the  case.  If  ordinary  minds  want 
sympathy  before  they  can  act  freely,  they  can  easily 
obtain  it;  their  ideas  and  feelings  are  of  the  common 
staple  of  humanity,  and  some  one  who  has  them  too 
may  be  found  across  the  street.  Bat  if  those  of  finer 
mould  should  have  the  same  dependence  of  heart,  it 
may  prove  a  sore  affliction  and  temptation  to  them ; 
for  who  will  respond  to  the  desires,  and  aims,  and 
emotions  most  dear  to  them  ?  They  wed  themselves  to 
a  benevolent  scheme  ;  it  is  thrust  aside  as  a  chimera. 
They  demonstrate  a  truth  of  startling  magnitude ; 
it  is  acknowledged  and  passed  by.  They  describe 
some  misery  of  the  poor,  the  child,  or  the  guilty  ;  the 
world  weeps,  and  the  oppression  is  untouched.  They 
pour  forth  their  conceptions  of  perfect  character,  and 
seek  to  refresh  in  men's  minds  the  bewildered  senti- 
ment of  right ;  every  conscience  approves,  and  not  a 


THE    STKENGTH    OF    THE    .LONELY.  193 

volition  stirs.  And  thus  they  are  left  alone,  without 
the  practical  support  of  a  single  sympathy.  What 
wonder  that  they  think  in  one  way,  and  act  in 
another,  when  the  world  reverences  their  thoughts, 
and  ridicules  their  actions  ?  Compelled  by  their 
nature  to  desire,  what  they  are  forbidden  by  men  to 
execute;  unable  to  love  any  thing  but  that  which 
is  pronounced  to  be  fit  only  for  a  dream ;  secretly 
dwelling  within  a  beauty  of  excellence  which  they 
would  be  held  insane  to  realize,  —  what  wonder  is  it, 
if  their  practical  energies  die  of  dearth,  —  if  they 
begin  to  doubt  their  nobler  nature,  and,  while  cher- 
ishing it  in  private,  dishonor  it  in  the  world ;  if  the 
pure  sincerity  of  their  mind  is  thus  at  length  broken 
down,  and  they  soil  in  act  the  spirit  which  they 
sanctify  in  thought;  and  life  wastes  away  in  habits, 
on  which  the  meditations  of  privacy  pour  a  flood  of 
ineffectual  shame,  and  in  impulses  to  better  things, 
more  and  more  passionate,  as  the  springs  of  the 
will  become  broken,  and  prayers  for  peace  of  more 
mournful  earnestness,  as  the  vision  sinks  into  melan- 
choly distance  ? 

But  the  dangers  of  an  excessive  dependence  upon 
sympathy  are  by  no  means  confined  to  minds  of  this 
order.  There  are,  within  the  range  of  every  man's 
life,  processes  of  mind  which  must  be  solitary ;  pas- 
sages of  duty  which  throw  him  absolutely  upon  his 
individual  moral  forces,  and  admit  of  no  aid  what- 
ever from  another.  Alone  we  must  stand  sometimes ; 
and  if  our  better  nature  is  not  to  shrink  into  weak- 
ness, we  Vnust  take  with  us  the  thought  which  was 
the  strength  of  Christ :  '  Yet  I  am  not  alone,  for  the 
Father  is  with  me.'  Jesus  was  evidently  susceptible, 
in  a  singular  degree,  to  the  influence  of  human  at- 
17 


194  THE    STRENGTH    OF    THE    LONELY. 

tachments  ;  he  was  the  type  of  that  form  of  character. 
Such,  indeed,  it  behoved  one  to  be  who  was  to  be 
regarded  as  the  perfect  model  of  humanity  ;  for  while 
the  self-relying  and  solitary  temper  rarely,  if  ever, 
acquires  the  grace  and  bloom  of  human  sympathies, 
the  mind,  originally  affectionate,  often,  by  efforts  of 
moral  principle,  rises  to  independent  strength ;  the 
sense  of  right  can  more  readily  indurate  the  tender 
than  melt  the  rocky  soul.  And  that  is  the  most 
finished  character  which  begins  in  beauty,  and  ends 
in  power ;  which  wins  its  way  to  loftiness  through  a 
host  of  angelic  humanities  that  would  sometimes 
hold  it  back ;  that  leans  on  the  love  of  kindred  while 
it  may,  and  when  it  may  not,  can  stand  erect  in  the 
love  of  God  ;  that  shelters  itself  amid  the  domestici- 
ties of  life,  while  duty  wills,  and  when  it  forbids,  can 
go  forth  under  the  expanse  of  immortality,  and  face 
any  storm  that  beats,  and  traverse  any  wilderness 
that  lies,  beneath  that  canopy.  The  sentiment  of 
Christ  in  my  text,  carried  into  the  solitary  portions 
of  our  existence,  is  the  true  power  by  which  to  ac- 
quire this  perfection.  What  these  solitary  portions 
are  will  readily  occur  to  every  thoughtful  mind.  An 
example  or  two  may  be  briefly  noticed. 

The  vigils  of  sickness,  —  of  those,  I  mean,  who 
watch  by  the  bed  of  sickness,  —  are  solitary  beyond 
expression.  What  loneliness  like  that,  which  is  the 
more  dreadful  in  proportion  as  the  friend  stretched 
at  our  right  hand  is  more  beloved?  Those  midnight 
hours,  poised  between  life  and  death,  that  seem  to 
belong  neither  to  time  nor  to  eternity,  —  claimed  by 
time,  when  we  listen  to  the  tolling  clock, —  by  eter- 
nity, when  we  hear  that  moaning  breath ;  that 
silence,  so  solid  that  we  cannot  breathe  into  it,  so 


THE  STRENGTH  OF  THE  LONELY.         195 

awful  that  we  dare  not  weep,  and  which  yet  we 
shudder  to  hear  broken  by  the  mutterings  of  deliri- 
um ;  that  confused  flitting  of  thoughts  across  our 
exhausted  minds,  strangely  mingling  the  trivial  and 
the  solemn,  —  beginning  perhaps  from  the  grotesque 
shapes  of  a  moon-lit  cloud,  then  sinking  us  deep  into 
dreams  of  the  past,  till  a  rustling  near  calls  us  to 
give  the  cup  of  cold  water,  and  that  fevered  eye  that 
looks  on  us  makes  us  think,  where  soon  will  be  the 
perturbed  spirit  that  lights  it! —  Oh,  what  relief  can 
be  to  this  agony,  what  trust  amid  this  despair,  but  in 
the  remembrance,  '  I  am  not  alone,  for  my  Father  is 
with  me  ? '  Serene  as  the  star  in  the  cool  heavens 
without,  gentle  as  the  loving  heart  whose  ebbing  life 
we  watch,  his  Infinite  mind  has  its  vigils  with  us, — 
the  vigils  of  eternal  Providence,  beneath  whose  eye, 
awake  alike  over  both  worlds,  sorrow  and  death 
vanish  away.  Into  what  peace  do  the  terrible  aspects 
of  things  around  subside  under  that  thought!  We 
are  no  longer  broken  upon  the  wheel  of  fatalism, 
given  over  to  fruitless  and  unmeaning  suffering ;  the 
feeling  that  life  is  going  wrong,  that  all  things  are 
dropping  into  wreck,  disappears.  We  rise  to  a  loftier 
point  of  view,  and  perceive  how  all  this  may  lie 
within  the  perfect  order  of  benignity;  how  death  in 
this  world  may  be  determined  by  the  laws  of  birth 
into  another;  how  our  sensitive  is  connected  with 
our  moral  nature,  and  from  deep  trial  great  strength 
may  grow,  —  the  capacious  and  enduring  mind,  the 
hardy  and  athletic  will,  the  refined  and  gentle  heart, 
the  devoted  spirit  of  duty.  Enfolded  within  the 
Divine  Paternity,  there  is  one  fixed  and  tranquil  ob- 
ject of  our  thoughts.  From  that  centre  of  repose  we 
can  look  forth  on  the  fitfulness  of  sickness  without 


196  THE    STRENGTH    OP    THE    LONELY. 

despair ;  the  flying  shadows  of  fear  seem  cast  by  an 
orb  of  everlasting  light.  He  that  in  this  spirit  meets 
the  trembling  moments  of  life,  will  gather  the  sub- 
limest  power  from  events  that  seem  to  crush  him, 
and  come  forth  from  the  mourner's  watch,  not  with 
wasted  and  haggard  mind,  not  morose  and  selfish, 
not  with  passive  and  helpless  air,  as  if  waiting  to  be 
the  sport  of  every  blast  that  beats,  but  with  uplifted 
conscience,  with  will  meeker  towards  others,  and 
sterner  towards  the  energy  of  the  hero,  and  the  calm- 
ness of  the  saint. 

Again,  we  must  be  solitary  when  we  are  tempted. 
The  management  of  the  character,  the  correction  of 
evil  habits,  the  suppression  of  wrong  desires,  the 
creation  of  new  virtues,  —  this  is  a  work  strictly 
individual,  with  which  no  '  stranger  intermeddleth,' 
in  which  the  sympathy  of  friends  may  be  deceptive, 
and  our  only  safety  is  in  a  superhuman  reliance. 
The  relation  of  the  human  being  to  God  is  altogether 
personal ;  there  can  be  no  partnership  in  its  responsi- 
bilities. Our  moral  convictions  must  have  an  undi- 
vided allegiance ;  and  to  withhold  our  reverence  till 
they  are  supported  by  the  suffrages  of  others,  is  an 
insult  which  they  will  not  bear.  What  can  those 
even  who  read  us  best  know  of  our  weaknesses,  and 
wants  and  capabilities  ?  They  would  have  to  clothe 
themselves  with  our  very  consciousness,  before  they 
could  be  fit  advisers  here. ,  How  often  does  their 
very  affection  become  our  temptation,  cheat  us  out 
of  our  contrition,  and  lead  us  to  adopt  some  pleasant 
theory  about  ourselves,  in  place  of  the  stern  and 
melancholy  truth !  How  often  does  their  erring  judg- 
ment lead  us  to  indolence  and  self-indulgence,  to  a 
dalliance  with  our  infirmities,  and  a  fatal  patience 


THE    STRENGTH    OF    THE    LONELY.  197 

with  our  sins !  If,  indeed,  there  were  a  more  preva- 
lent conscientiousness  in  the  distribution  of  praise 
and  blame  ;  if  all  men  felt  how  serious  a  thing  it  is 
to  dispense  such  mighty  powers,  friends  might  con- 
sult together  with  greater  security  respecting  their 
moral  failures  and  obligations  ;  penitence  might  pour 
itself  forth  in  a  species  of  auricular  confession  no 
less  safe  than  natural ;  the  sense  of  wrong  would 
become  more  profound,  when  the  violation  of  duty 
had  shaped  itself  into  words  ;  and  the  secret  sugges- 
tions and  resolves  of  conscience  be  doubly  strong, 
when  echoed  by  the  living  voice  of  human  tenderness. 
Even  then,  however,  we  must  vigilantly  guard  our 
own  moral  perceptions,  clear  the  atmosphere  between 
them  and  Heaven,  and  allow  no  sophistry  to  shade 
us  from  the  eye  of  God.  At  best,  we  must  often 
have  to  forego  all  sympathy;  none  can  be  with  us  in 
our  multiform  temptations.  Many  a  purpose  fit  only 
for  ourselves,  suited  to  the  peculiarities  of  our  own 
character  and  condition,  we  must  take  up  in  private, 
and  in  silence  pile  up  effort  after  effort,  till  it  be 
accomplished.  And  in  these  lonely  struggles  of  duty, 
in  this  invisible  repression  of  wrong  impulses  and 
maintenance  of  great  aims,  the  inevitable  loss  of 
human  aid  must  be  replaced  by  our  affinity  with 
God.  While  he  is  with  us,  we  are  not  alone.  He 
that  invented  human  virtue,  and  breathed  into  us  our 
private  veneration  for  its  greatness;  He  that  loves 
the  martyr  spirit,  scorning  suffering  for  the  sake  of 
truth;  He  that  beholds  in  every  faithful  mind  the 
reflection  of  himself;  He  that  hath  built  an  everlast- 
ing world,  at  once  the  shelter  of  victorious  goodness, 
and  the  theatre  of  its  yet  nobler  triumphs,  —  enwraps 
us  in  his  immensity,  and  sustains  us  by  his  love. 
17* 


198  THE    STHENGTH    OF    THE    LONELY. 

The  sooner  we  learn  to  love  him,  and  find  comfort 
in  the  society  of  God,  the  better  are  we  prepared  for 
every  solemn  passage  of  our  existence.  It  is  well, 
ere  we  depart,  to  confide  ourselves  sometimes  to  the 
invisible ;  for  then,  at  least,  we  must  be  thrust  forth 
upon  it  in  a  solitude  personal  as  well  as  moral.  The 
dying  make  that  pass  alone ;  human  voices  fade 
away ;  human  forms  retire ;  familiar  scenes  sink 
from  sight ;  and  silent  and  lonely  the  spirit  migrates 
to  the  great  secret.  Who  would  not  feel  himself 
then  beneath  the  all-sheltering  wing,  and  say  amid 
the  mystic  space,  '  I  am  not  alone,  for  the  Father  is 
with  me  ? ' 


XVI. 

HAND    AND    HEART. 
JOHN  xiv.  23. 

IF  A  MAN  LOVE  ME,  HE  WILL  KEEP  MY  WORDS  ;  AND  MY  FATHER 
WILL  LOVE  HIM,  AND  WE  WILL  COME  UNTO  HIM,  AND  MAKE  OUR 
ABODE  WITH  HIM. 

THERE  is  no  point  in  theoretical  morality  more 
difficult  to  determine  (if  we  may  judge  from  the 
disputes  of  philosophers),  than  the  comparative  worth 
and  mutual  relations  of  good  affections  and  good 
actions.  Ought  it  to  be  the  direct  and  primary  aim 
of  the  teacher  of  duty  to  produce  a  harvest  of  be- 
neficent deeds  ?  or  to  impart  clear  perceptions  and 
prompt  sensibility  of  conscience  in  relation  to  right 
and  wrong  ?  If  the  former,  his  instructions  will 
present  an  inventory  and  careful  valuation  of  all 
possible  '  voluntary  acts ; '  and  his  exhortations  be 
addressed  to  the  hopes  and  fears,  to  the  prudential 
apprehensions  of  good  and  evil,  which  operate  im- 
mediately upon  the  will.  If  the  latter,  he  will 
meddle  little  with  cases  of  casuistry,  or  problems 
which  exhibit  duty  as  an  object  of  doubt;  will 
define  and  illuminate  the  secret  image  of  right  that 
dwells  within  every  mind ;  and  present  as  incentives 
those  models  of  high  faith  and  disinterested  virtue 
which  kindle  the  reverence  of  the  heart.  In  this 


^00  HAXD    AND    HEART. 

country,  especially  among  those  who  have  been  most 
anxious  to  'enlighten'  its  religion,  the  predominant 
attention  has  been  given  to  external  morality.  The 
practical  temper  of  the  English,  impatient  of  loud 
profession  and  sanctimonious  inconsistency,  reason- 
ably enough  cried  out  for  '•fruit!  Philosophy  caught 
this  spirit,  and  embodied  it  in  a  system  of  no  small 
pretensions.  Seeing  that  fine  sentiments  are  worth- 
less without  good  deeds,  the  masters  of  this  school 
have  decided,  that  the  affections  have  no  excellence 
except  as  instruments  for  producing  action ;  that, 
intrinsically,  they  are  all  alike,  without  any  distinc- 
tion of  good  or  bad ;  that  moral  qualities  primarily 
attach  merely  to  practice,  derivatively  only  to  the 
mental  tendencies  towards  practice,  and  in  any  case 
are  constituted  by  the  effects  of  conduct  in  producing 
enjoyment  or  pain ;  that  the  moralist  has  no  concern 
with  the  motives  of  an  agent,  provided  he  does  that 
which  is  useful ;  that  the  only  measure  of  virtue,  in 
short,  is  the  amount  of  pleasure  it  creates. 

This  system  has  been  embraced  and  is  still  held 
by  many  Christians,  chiefly  among  the  churches 
within  the  sphere  of  Dr.  Priestley's  influence.  It  is 
expounded,  in  a  form  full  of  inconsistency  and  com- 
promise, by  Dr.  Paley,  in  a  work  whose  popularity 
appears  to  me  rather  a  discredit  to  England  than  an 
honor  to  him  ;  and  though  it  has  been  a  general 
favorite  with  irreligious  moralists,  and  appears  in 
natural  reaction  from  the  enthusiasm  of  the  most 
earnest  pietists,  it  has  seldom  been  considered  hostile 
to  Christianity  itself.  This  is  no  fit  occasion  for 
discussing  its  philosophical  pretensions  ;  and  were  it 
not  for  the  extent  and  nature  of  its  practical  in- 
fluence, it  might  be  abandoned  to  the  Academic 


HAND   AND    HEAET.  201 

Lecture-room,  where  the  rigorous  methods  of  thought 
necessary  for  its  examination  would  not  be  mis- 
placed. But  there  is  one  particular  view  of  it  which 
may  naturally  enough  be  presented  here.  Its  char- 
acteristic sentiment  may  be  placed  side  by  side  with 
those  of  the  Christian  Morals,  and  the  relation 
between  them  ascertained.  And  no  one,  I  imagine, 
can  perceive  in  it  a  trace  of  Christ's  peculiar  spirit ; 
few  surely  can  be  wholly  unconscious  of  the  wide 
variance  between  its  leading  ideas  and  his ;  and  all 
who  have  abandoned  their  minds  to  the  impression 
of  his  teachings,  must  feel  that  he  assigns  a  very 
different  rank  to  the  affectionate  elements  of  charac- 
ter; that,  not  content  with  tasking  the  hand,  he 
makes  high  demands  upon  the  heart ;  that  public 
benefit  is  subordinate  with  him  to  personal  perfec- 
tion ;  and  that  instead  of  merging  the  individual 
mind  in  the  advantage  of  society,  he  is  silent  of  the 
happiness  of  society,  except  as  involved  in  the 
holiness  of  the  individual.  Nothing  surely  can  be 
further  from  the  spirit  of  Jesus  than  to  measure 
excellence  by  the  magnitude  of  its  effects,  rather 
than  the  purity  of  its  principle ;  else  he  would  never 
have  ranked  the  widow's  mite  above  the  vast  dona- 
tives of  vanity  ;  or  have  praised  the  profuse  affection 
of  the  penitent  that  lavished  on  him  costly  offerings, 
esteeming  them  yet  less  precious  than  the  conse- 
crating tribute  of  her  tears.  Here,  it  was  not  the 
deed  whose  usefulness  gave  worth  to  the  disposition, 
but  the  disposition  whose  excellence  gave  value  to 
the  deed.  And  this  is  everywhere  the  character  of 
Christianity.  It  plants  us  directly  beneath  an  eye 
that  looketh  at  the  heart;  it  forgives,  in  that  we 
'  have  loved  much ; '  it  throws  away  without  com- 


202  HAXD    AND    HEAKT. 

punction  the  largest  husk  of  ceremony,  and  treasures 
up  the  smallest  seed  of  life ;  instead  of  sharpening 
us  for  casuistry,  it  prostrates  us  in  worship ;  reveals 
to  us  our  inner  nature,  by  bringing  us  in  contact 
with  God,  who  is  a  Spirit,  and  to  whom  we  bear  1he 
likeness  of  child  to  parent ;  gives  us  an  intermediate 
image  of  him  and  of  ourselves.  Christ  the  meek 
and  merciful,  whose  life  was  a  prolonged  expression 
of  disinterestedness  and  love;  and  imposes,  as  the 
sole  condition  of  discipleship,  'faith  in  him,'  —  im- 
plicit trust,  that  is,  in  the  spirit  of  his  mind ;  self- 
precipitation  upon  a  piety  and  fidelity  like  his,  with- 
out concession  to  expediency,  without  faltering  in 
danger,  without  flight  from  suffering,  without  slack- 
ened step,  though  duty  should  conduct  us  straight 
into  the  arms  of  ignominy  and  death. 

That  Christianity  does  make  high  demands  upon 
our  affections  must  then  be  admitted.  Indeed  this  is 
virtually  confessed  by  the  enthusiastic  forms  into 
which  it  has  burst,  by  the  outbreak  of  fervor  from 
which  every  new  church  is  born,  and  the  eager  efforts 
made  to  sustain  this  vivid  life.  Nay,  it  is  privately 
confessed  by  every  cold  and  languid  yet  honest  heart, 
that  cannot  lay  open  before  it  the  story  of  Christ, 
without  the  secret  consciousness  of  rebuke.  It  is 
confessed  by  the  anxieties  of  many  good  minds,  that 
are  ashamed  of  the  slow  fires  and  faint  light  of  their 
faith  and  love ;  that  can  spur  their  will,  more  easily 
than  kindle  their  affections;  and  wish  they  were 
called  upon  only  to  t/o,  and  not  also  to  feel  They 
cast  about  the  vaguest  and  vainest  efforts  after  deeper 
impressions  of  things  holy  and  sublime;  they  wonder 
at  the  apathy  with  which  they  dwell  amid  the  infini- 
tude of  God ;  they  convince  themselves  how  untrue  is 


HAND    AND    HEABT.  203 

that  state  of  mind  which  treats  the  '  seen  and  tem- 
poral' as  if  there  were  no  'unseen  and  eternal;'  they 
assure  themselves  how  terrible  must  be  the  disorder 
of  that  soul,  whose  springs  of  pure  emotion-  are  thus 
locked  in  death.  But  with  all  this  they  cannot  shame, 
or  reason,  or  terrify  themselves  into  any  nobler  glow. 
The  avenues  of  intellect,  and  judgment,  and  fear,  are 
not  those  by  which  a  new  feeling  is  permitted  to  visit 
and  refresh  the  heart.  The  ice  cannot  thaw  itself; 
but  must  ask  the  warmer  gales  of  heaven  to  blow, 
and  the  sun  aloft  to  send  more  piercing  beams. 
There  is  nothing  vainer  or  more  hopeless  than  the 
direct  struggles  of  the  mind  to  transform  its  own 
affections,  to  change  by  a  fiat  of  volition  the  order 
of  its  tastes,  and  the  intensity  of  its  love.  Self-inspi- 
ration is  a  contradiction ;  and  to  suspend,  by  upheav- 
ings  of  the  will,  the  force  of  habitual  desire,  is  no  less 
impossible  than,  by  writhings  of  the  muscles,  to  anni- 
hilate our  own  weight. 

This,  you  will  say,  is  a  hard  doctrine;  that  our 
religion  demands  that  which  our  nature  forbids, — in- 
vites a  regeneration  of  the  heart  after  which  the  will 
may  strive  in  vain.  Yet,  I  think,  you  must  be  con- 
scious of  its  truth,  and  acknowledge  that  no  spasm  of 
determination  can  make  you  regard  with  hate  that 
which  is  now  an  object  of  your  love.  But  if  Christi- 
anity presents  the  perplexity,  its  spirit  affords  the 
solution.  It  shows  us,  indeed,  that  to  gain  a  pure  and 
noble  mind,  great  in  its  aims,  resolute  in  its  means, 
strong  with  the  invincibility  of  conscience,  yet  mel- 
lowed with  reverential  love,  is  the  end  of  all  our  dis- 
cipline here.  But  it  nowhere  encourages  a  direct  aim 
at  this  end,  as  if  it  could  be  reached  by  the  struggles 
of  a  day,  or  of  a  year.  It  nowhere  invites  a  morbid 


204  HAND    AND    HEART. 

gaze  upon  our  own  feelings,  as  if  by  self- vigilance  we 
could  look  ourselves  into  perfection.  In  Christ  it 
furnishes  us  with  an  image  of  divinest  beauty,  that 
we  may  turn  our  eye  on  that,  not  upon  ourselves ; 
and  perverse,  even  to  disease,  is  the  temper,  which, 
instead  of  being  engaged  with  that  sublimest  work  of 
the  great  sculptor  of  souls,  whines  rather  over  its  own 
deformity,  and  seeks  to  cure  it  by  unnatural  contor- 
tions. Christianity  sends  each  faculty  of  our  nature 
to  its  proper  office;  our  veneration,  to  Christ;  our 
wills,  to  their  duty.  It  precipitates  us  on  Action  as 
the  proper  school  of  Affection;  and,  reversing  the 
moralist's  principle,  values  not  the  pure  heart  as  the 
tool  for  producing  serviceable  deeds,  but  for  the  good 
deeds,  as  at  once  the  expression  and  the  nourishment 
of  that  greatest  of  possessions,  a  good  mind.  It  was 
not  by  retiring  into  himself,  but  by  going  out  of  him- 
self, that  Christ  overcame  the  world;  not  by  spiritual 
pathology,  and  self-torture,  but  by  veritable  'suffer- 
ings,' that  he  'became  perfect;'  not  by  measuring  his 
own  emotions,  but  by  oblivion  of  them  amid  a  crowd 
of  toils,  a  succession  of  fulfilled  resolves,  a  profuse 
expenditure  of  life  and  effort  having  others  for  their 
object,  that  he  rose  above  the  dignity  of  men.  and 
ripened  the  divinest  spirit  of  the  skies. 

Struck,  then,  by  the  word  of  Christ,  the  moral  para- 
lytic must '  take  up  his  bed  and  walk.'  It  is  surprising 
how  practical  duty  enriches  the  fancy  and  the  heart, 
and  action  clears  and  deepens  the  affections.  Like 
the  run  into  the  green  fields  and  morning  air  to  the 
fevered  limbs  and  tightened  brow  of  the  night-student, 
it  circulates  a  stream  of  unspeakable  refreshment, 
'  and  renews  our  strength  as  the  eagle's.'  Indeed,  no 
one  can  have  a  true  idea  of  right,  until  he  does  it ; 


HAND   AND    HEART.  205 

any  genuine  reverence  for  it,  till  he  has  done  it  often 
and  with  cost ;  any  peace  ineffable  in  it,  till  he  does 
it  always  and  with  alacrity.  Does  any  one  complain, 
that  the  best  affections  are  transient  visitors  with  him, 
and  the  heavenly  spirit  a  stranger  to  his  heart?  O 
let  him  not  go  forth,  on  any  strained  wing  of  thought, 
in  distant  guest  of  them ;  but  rather  stay  at  home, 
and  set  his  house  in  the  true  order  of  conscience ;  and 
of  their  own  accord  the  divinest  guests  will  enter :  he 
hath  'kept  the  words'  of  Christ,  and  the  'Father  him- 
self will  love  him,'  and  they  '  will  come  unto  him,  and 
make  their  abode  with  him.'  The  man  most  gifted 
with  genius  and  rich  in  intellectual  wisdom,  but 
withal  barren  of  practice  and  self-indulgent,  can  call 
up  before  him  no  conception  of  moral  excellence  so 
authentic,  so  divine,  as  many  an  obscure  disciple, 
who  through  frequent  tribulation,  has  done  and  borne 
the  perfect  will  of  God.  Even  the  smallest  discon- 
tent of  conscience  may  render  turbid  the  whole  tem- 
per of  the  mind ;  but  only  produce  the  effort  that 
restores  its  peace,  and  over  the  whole  atmosphere  a 
breath  of  unexpected  purity  is  spread ;  doubt  and  irri- 
tability pass  as  clouds  away;  the  withered  sympathies 
of  earth  and  home  open  their  leaves  and  live;  and 
through  the  clearest  blue  the  deep  is  seen  of  the 
heaven  where  God  resides.  And  here,  too,  we  may 
observe  the  opposite  effects  which  action  and  experi- 
ence produce  upon  our  preconceptions  of  wrong  and 
of  right.  Do  the  right,  and  your  ideal  of  it  grows  and 
perfects  itself.  Do  the  wrong,  and  your  ideal  of  it 
breaks  up  and  vanishes.  The  young  and  pure  mind, 
stranger  yet  to  the  vehemence  of  appetite  and  revenge, 
looks  on  sin  as  a  dreadful  and  demon  image,  shrinks 
with  awe  from  its  approach ;  shudders  at  the  laugh  of 
18 


206  HAND    AXD    HEART. 

guilty  revelry,  and  gazes  on  the  face  of  acknowledged 
crime,  as  if  it  were  a  phantom  of  the  abyss.  Guilt  is 
then  a  thing  unearthly  and  preternatural,  whose  grasp 
is  more  terrible  than  death.  And  truly  if  this  being 
now  innocent  should  ever  become  its  prey,  it  will  be 
through  a  struggle  deep  and  deadly,  as  with  the  tender 
mercies  of  a  fiend.  But  once  let  that  struggle  be  over, 
and  the  fiend  vanishes  for  ever ;  passes  into  plain  flesh 
and  blood,  that  '  is  by  no  means  so  dreadful  as  was 
imagined;'  nay,  even  assumes  the  air  of  the  jovial 
companion,  and  turns  the  dance  of  death  into  a 
comedy.  The  true  'superstition'  of  early  years  flies 
before  the  false  'experience'  of  maturity.  The  ideal, 
so  much  juster  than  the  actual,  is  gone;  and  there 
falls  upon  the  heart  that  folly  which  '  makes  a  mock 
at  sin.' 

In  saying  that  action  is  the  school  of  affection,  it 
is  clear  that  we  cannot  mean  mere  manual  or  physical 
labor,  or  activity  in  business,  or  even  the  mechanical 
routine  of  any  practical  life,  however  unexceptionable 
be  its  habits.  The  regularities  of  constitutional  good- 
ness, the  order  of  a  simply  blameless  existence,  do  not 
reach  that  pitch  of  energy  which  sustains  the  noblest 
health  of  the  soul ;  these  may  continue  their  accus- 
tomed course,  and  yet  the  springs  of  inward  life  and 
strength  dry  up.  In  the  mere  negative  virtue  which 
abstains  from  gross  outward  wrong,  which  commits 
neither  theft,  nor  cruelty,  nor  excess,  and  paces  the 
daily  round  of  usage,  there  is  not  necessarily  any 
principle  of  immortal  growth.  The  force  requisite  to 
maintain  it  becomes  continually  less,  as  the  obstruc- 
tions are  worn  down  by  ceaseless  attrition ;  and 
the  character  may  hence  become  simply  automatic, 
performing  a  series  of  regularities  with  the  smallest 


HAXD    AXD    HEART.  207 

expenditure  of  soul.  To  nourish  high  affections, 
worthy  of  a  nature  that  hath  kindred  with  the  Father 
of  spirits,  more  than  this  is  needed;  positive  and 
creative  power,  spontaneous  and  original  force,  con- 
quering energy  of  resolve,  must  be  put  forth ;  from  the 
inner  soul  some  central  strength  must  pass  upon  the 
active  life  to  destroy  that  equilibrium  between  within 
and  without  which  makes  our  days  mere  self-repeti- 
tions, and  to  give  us  a  progressive  history.  There  is 
a  connection  profound  and  beautiful  between  the 
affectionate  and  the  self-denying  character  of  Christi- 
anity. The  voluntary  sacrifices  feed  the  involuntary 
sympathies  of  virtue;  and  he  that  will  daily  suffer  for 
his  duty,  nor  lay  his  head  to  rest  till  he  has  renounced 
some  ease,  embraced  some  hardship,  in  the  service  of 
others  and  of  God,  shall  replenish  the  fountains  of  his 
holiest  life;  and  shall  find  his  soul,  not  settling  into 
the  flat  and  stagnant  marsh,  but  flowing  under  the 
most  delicious  light  of  heaven  above,  over  the  glad- 
dest fields  of  Providence  below.  I  know  that  the 
moralists  of  whom  I  have  before  spoken,  —  they  that 
turn  the  shrine  of  duty  into  a  shop  for  weighing 
grains  and  scruples  of  enjoyment,  —  entertain  a  great 
horror  of  the  notion  of  self-sacrifice,  and  ridicule  the 
doctrine  of  denial  as  ascetic.  Any  interference  with 
the  luxury  of  virtue  is  to  be  deplored  ;  disturbance  to 
its  repose  must  be  admitted  to  be  disagreeable,  and, 
'so  far  as  it  goes,  an  evil;'  and  though  clashing  pleas- 
ures will  sometimes  present  themselves,  we  must 
take  care  never  to  let  go  the  nearer,  till  we  have  in 
our  hands  the  title-deeds  of  the  remoter.  It  is  sur- 
prising, we  are  told,  how  pleasant  a  thing  true  good- 
ness is,  if  we  will  only  believe  it.  It  may  be  so,  or 
it  may  not  be  so;  but,  at  all  events,  he  who  goes  to  it 


208  HAND    AND    HEART. 

in  this  spirit  has  no  true  heart  for  it,  and  shall  be  re- 
fused the  thing  he  seeks.  God  will  have  us  surrender 
without  terms ;  and  till  then,  we  are  fast  prisoners, 
and  not  free  children,  in  his  universe.  So  needful  is 
sacrifice  to  the  health  and  hardihood  of  conscience, 
that  if  the  occasions  for  it  do  not  present  themselves 
spontaneously  in  our  lot,  we  must  create  them  for 
ourselves;  not  reserving  to  ourselves  those  exercises 
of  virtue  which  are  constitutionally  pleasant,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  esteeming  the  asperity  of  a  duty  as  the 
reason  why  we  should  put  our  hand  to  it  at  once;  not 
acquiescing  in  the  facility  of  wisely  adjusted  habits, 
but  accepting  the  ease  of  living  well  as  the  peremp- 
tory summons  of  God  to  live  better.  He,  in  short,  is 
no  true  soldier  of  the  Lord,  nor  worthy  to  bear  the 
Christian  armor,  who,  in  service  so  high,  will  not 
make  an  hour's  forced  march  of  duty  every  day.  So 
doing,  the  inner  power,  the  athletic  vigor,  of  our  moral 
nature,  will  not  waste  and  die.  The  perceptions  of 
goodness,  beauty,  truth,  become,  when  we  are  thus 
faithful,  singularly  clear.  There  ripens  within  us  the 
fullest  faith  in  the  moral  excellence  of  God ;  the  ties 
that  bind  us  to  him  and  to  his  children  are  drawn 
more  closely  round ;  and  in  this  world  we  dwell  as 
in  the  lower  mansion  of  his  house,  where  also  the 
'  Father  loveth  us,  and  maketh  his  abode  with  us.' 

By  such  practical  performance  alone,  can  any 
genuine  love  of  man  be  matured  in  us.  Beneficence 
is  the  true  school  of  benevolence.  We  are  not  to 
wait  till  some  descending  spirit,  uninvoked  and  un- 
earned, enters  us,  and  makes  the  labor  of  sympathy 
delightful;  but  go  and  do  the  deed  of  mercy,  though 
it  be  with  reluctant  step,  with  dry  and  parched 
spirit,  and  without  the  grace  of  a  free  charity.  Per- 


HAND    AND    HEART.  209 

haps  we  may  return  with  more  genial  mind  and 
liberated  affections ;  and  if  not,  we  must  the  sooner 
and  the  oftener  do  the  act  of  blessing  again,  though 
it  be  amid  self-rebuke  and  shame,  and  recoil  with  no 
peace  upon  the  soul.  He  that  with  patience  will 
become  the  almoner  of  God  to  the  poor  and  sad,  and 
ask  no  portion  of  the  blessing  for  himself,  shall  catch 
the  spirit  of  the  Divine  love  at  length.  Those  whom 
he  steadfastly  benefits  he  will  rejoice  in  at  4he  end. 
Even  with  God  this  is  the  order  too;  we  begin  with 
being  his  beneficiaries,  and  end  with  being  his  chil- 
dren. He  created  us  first  (and  that  was  blessing), 
placed  us  in  the  glory  and  immensity  of  his  universe, 
and  conferred  upon  us  the  high  capacities  and  multi- 
form nature  that  make  us  his  own  image;  and  then 
regarded  us  with  the  Divine  affectionateness,  and 
embraced  us  in  his  Everlasting  Fatherhood. 

By  such  practical  performance  alone,  can  we  dis- 
miss the  clouds  of  doubt  and  ignoble  mistrust, 
which,  really  covering  our  own  disordered  minds, 
seem  to  cast  shadows  around  the  Most  High,  and  to 
blot  out  the  heavens  from  us.  The  merely  worldly 
man,  interred  amid  mean  cares,  doubts  the  majestic 
truth  of  religion,  simply  from  their  sublimity  and 
vastnest,  which  render  them  incommensurabJe  with 
his  poor  fraction  of  a  mind.  Let  him  go  and  do  a  few 
noble  deeds,  and  elevate  the  proportions  of  his  nature, 
and  it  is  wonderful  what  mighty  things  seem  to  be- 
come possible.  Deity  is  near  and  even  present  at 
once,  and  immortality  not  improbable.  And  as  for 
the  self-inclosed  and  anxious  student,  his  difficulties 
may  be  referred  to  the  diseased  and  ascendant  activity 
of  a  subtle  understanding,  without  the  materials  of 
a  deep  moral  experience  on  which  to  work.  Let 
18* 


210  HAND   AND    HEART. 

him  remedy  this  fatal  dearth ;  rouse  the  slumbering 
strength  of  conscience;  and,  quitting  the  theoretic 
problem,  take  up  the  practical  responsibilities  of  life; 
and  his  work  will  clear  his  thought,  rendering  it  not 
less  acute,  and  more  confiding  and  reverential.  Seeing 
more  into  his  own  nature,  he  will  penetrate  further 
into  all  else,  especially  the  source  whence  it  pro- 
ceeds, the  scene  in  which  it  is,  and  the  issue  to  which 
it  tends.  Of  all  depressing  scepticism,  of  all  painful 
solicitude,  not  the  agility  of  thought,  but  the  alacrity 
of  duty,  is  the  fit  antagonist.  At  least,  until  we  do 
the  will  of  God,  it  becomes  doubt  to  be  humble;  and 
when  we  do  it,  assuredly  it  will  be  yet  humbler. 


XVII. 

SILENCE    AND    MEDITATION. 

PSALM  LXIII.  6. 

I  REMEMBER  THEE  UPON  MT  BED,  AND  MEDITATE  ON  THEE  IN  THE 
NIGHT-WATCHES. 

THE  elder  Protestant  moralists  laid  great  stress,  in 
all  their  teachings,  on  the  duties  of  self-scrutiny  and 
prayer.  And  though  their  complaints  show  that 
there  was  a  frequent  neglect  of  their  injunctions,  it 
cannot  be  doubted  that,  in  our  forefathers'  scheme  of 
life,  the  exercise  of  lonely  thought  filled  a  much  larger 
space  than  it  does  in  ours.  It  was  deemed  shameful 
and  atheistically  to  enter  the  closet  for  nothing  but 
sleep,  and  quit  it  only  for  meals  and  trade ;  passing 
the  avvfulness  of  lire  entirely  by,  and  evading  all 
earnest  contact  with  the  deep  and  silent  God.  A 
sense  of  guilt  attached  to  those  who  cast  themselves 
from  their  civil  life  into  their  dreams,  and  back  again. 
That  the  merchant  or  the  statesman  should  be  upon 
his  knees,  that  the  general  should  pass  from  his 
despatches  to  his  devotions,  and  turn  his  eye  from 
the  hosts  of  battle  to  the  host  of  heaven,  was  not  felt 
to  be  incongruous  or  absurd.  Milton's  mind  gave 
itself  at  once  to  the  discord  of  politics  below,  and  the 
symphonies  of  seraphim  above.  Vane  mingled  with 
the  administration  of  colonies,  and  accounts  of  the 


212  SILENCE    AND    MEDITATION. 

navy,  hopes  of  a  theocracy,  and  meditations  on  the 
millenium ;  and  it  was  no  more  natural  for  Cromwell 
to  call  his  officers  to  council  than  to  prayer.  Nay, 
without  going  back  so  far,  there  are  few  families  of 
any  standing,  that  do  not  inherit  the  pious  diaries  of 
some  nearer  ancestry,  betraying  how  real  and  large 
a  concern  to  ,hem  were  the  exercises  of  the  solitary 
soul. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  there  is  a  great  difference 
now.  Not  that  Christians  may  not  be  found  in 
many  sects,  and  copiously  in  some,  with  whom  the 
old  devout  habit  is  maintained  in  all  integrity;  of 
whose  existence  it  is  a  simple  and  sincere  ingredient ; 
who  still  find  an  open  door  between  heaven  and 
earth,  and  pass  in  and  out  with  free  and  earnest 
heart.  But  these  represent  the  characteristic  spirit 
of  a  former,  rather  than  of  the  present  age.  The 
sentiments  of  our  own  times  everywhere  betray  the 
growing  encroachments  of  the  outward  upon  the 
inward  life.  How  different  is  our  modern  '  saying 
our  prayers '  from  those  wrestlings  of  spirit,  and 
groans  and  tears  that  convulsed  the  Covenanters  of 
old  ;  nay,  how  much  is  there  in  this,  that,  unless 
there  is  a  printed  page  before  us,  we  know  not  what 
we  want,  and  left  to  ourselves  should  scarcely  find 
we  had  a  want  at  all !  Prayer  by  the  printing-press 
is  surely  a  very  near  approach  to  piety  by  machinery. 
The  public  changes  in  the  faith  of  churches  which 
are  conspicuously  taking  place  around  us,  indicate 
the  same  loss  of  depth  and  earnestness  in  personal 
religion ;  for  what  do  the  new  doctrines  say  ?  '  I 
cannot  stand  alone  with  God,  and  seek  his  pity  to 
my  solitary  soul ;  I  must  put  myself  into  the  visible 
church,  and  appropriate  a  share  of  his  favor  to  that 


SILENCE   AND    MEDITATION.  213 

spiritual  corporation  ;  I  can  find  no  sanctification  by 
direct  contact  of  spirit  with  spirit,  and  must  get  it 
done  for  me  through  priests  and  sacraments.'  And 
what  is  this  but  an  open  proclamation  that  private 
audience  with  God  has  become  impossible,  and  he 
can  be  approached  only  through  an  ambassador? 
Everywhere  strength  seems  to  have  gone  out  from 
the  devotional  element  of  life.  Those  who  display 
most  of  this  element  are  no  longer,  like  the  Puritans, 
the  strongest  men  of  their  day,  most  resolute,  most 
simple,  most  powerful  in  debate,  most  direct  in 
action;  but  are  felt  to  be  feminine  and  subtle, 
without  manly  breadth  of  natural  heart,  and  firm 
footing  upon  reality.  The  moments  each  man 
spends  in  it  are  seldom  his  truest  and  most  unforced  ; 
it  is  not,  as  once,  the  clear,  deep  eye  of  his  nature 
that  he  turns  to  Heaven,  bat  the  dead  and  glassy ; 
and  he  who  is  without  his  sincerity  in  his  closet,  and 
with  only  half  of  it  at  church,  flings  it  all  into  the 
work  of  civil  life.  In  individual  character,  and  in 
society  at  large,  power  seems  to  have  gone  over  from 
the  spiritual  to  the  secular. 

This  change  is  no  fit  subject  for  unmixed  com- 
plaint ;  much  less  must  we  desire  to  terrify  men,  like 
culprits,  into  an  alarm  at  their  impiety,  and  an  af- 
fected resumption  of  the  ancient  discipline.  Old 
ways  of  life  are  not  thrown  aside,  until  they  become 
untrue,  and  when  they  have  become  untrue,  their 
sanctity  is  gone;  though  the  usage  of  churches  may 
plead  for  them,  the  laws  of  God  are  against  them. 
Who  can  recommend  prayer  to  one  who  has  lost  the 
heart  to  pray  ?  —  confession  to  one  who  is  stricken 
by  no  penitence  ?  —  the  words  of  trust  to  one  whose 
God  has  gone  into  the  darkness  of  Fate  ?  —  self- 


214  SILENCE    AND    MEDITATION. 

examination  to  one  who,  in  too  fine  a  knowledge  of 
what  passes  within,  finds  no  power  to  do  the  duty 
without  ?  The  state  of  mind  which  unfits  men  for 
the  habits  of  our  fathers,  may  be  lower  or  may  be 
higher ;  but  be  it  what  it  may,  there  is  no  virtue  in 
retaining  what  has  grown  false ;  let  all,  in  their  be- 
lief or  unbelief,  their  clearness  or  perplexity,  ground 
themselves  only  upon  reality,  and  live  out  the  highest 
conviction  not  of  yesterday  but  of  to-day,  and  how- 
ever the  forms  of  our  being  may  change,  its  spirit 
will  remain  unceasingly  devout.  If  you  ask,  '  "What 
is  it  that  has  rendered  the  lonely  piety  of  our  fore- 
fathers less  natural  and  possible  to  us  ?  '  I  believe 
the  reason  to  be  this, — their  lot  was  cast  near  the 
age  of  the  reformation ;  they  breathed  its  spirit  and 
lived  its  life;  and  as  Protestantism  was  at  first  a 
simple  insurrection  against  formalism  and  falsehood, 
and  gave  to  the  faith  within,  the  authority  which  it 
denied  to  the  church  without,  so  did  it  exclusively 
develop  the  inward  religion  of  the  soul,  and  put  it  in 
artificial  contrast  with  outward  interests  and  human 
duties.  Installing  the  private  conscience  in  the  place 
of  the  anointed  priest,  it  gave  that  conscience  much 
of  the  priestly  character,  inquisitorial,  casuistical, 
vigilant  and  stern ;  and  sent  a  man  to  his  self-exam- 
ination, as  before  he  would  have  gone  to  his  con- 
fessional, to  question  himself  as  the  church  would 
have  questioned  him  before,  only  with  severity  more 
searching,  as  his  consciousness  knew  better  what  to 
ask.  Hence  arose  an  anxious  scrupulosity  of  mind ; 
a  loss  of  all  dependence  except  on  the  divine  offices 
of  the  solitary  soul ;  a  feeling  of  terrible  necessity 
for  the  help  and  strength  of  God ;  a  keen  scrutiny 
into  all  the  doublings  of  the  heart,  and  an  apprehen- 


SILENCE    AND    MEDITAT-ION.  215 

sion  of  every  sophistry  of  sin ;  passing  over  at  once 
from  the  gay  laxity  of  the  Catholic  into  a  grim  and 
solemn  earnestness.  The  change  was  noble  and 
healthy,  only,  like  all  reactions,  capable  of  excess. 
Men  may  learn  too  much  of  what  goes  on  within 
them ;  their  spiritual  analysis  may  be  too  fine  ;  a 
morbid  self-consciousness  may  be  produced,  which  in 
giving  sensitive  knowledge,  takes  away  practical 
power;  and  he  who  will  microscopically  look  at  the 
ultimate  fibres  of  his  life-roots,  scrapes  away  the 
element  in  which  they  thrive,  and  withers  them  in 
the  light  by  which  he  sees.  We  must  ever  grow 
from  darkness  and  the  earth ;  enough  if  the  blossom 
and  the  fruit  be  worthy  of  the  sunshine  and  the 
heaven.  Our  days  witness  a  recoil  from  the  extreme 
inwardness  of  our  fore-father's  religion  ;  human 
affections  warm  us  more  ;  human  duties  are  nobler 
in  our  view  ;  social  interests  are  of  deeper  moment ; 
and  the  whole  scene  of  man's  visible  life,  no  longer 
the  mere  vestibule  of  an  invisible  futurity,  has  a 
worth  and  dignity  of  its  own,  which  philanthropy 
delights  to  honor,  and  only  fanaticism  can  despise. 
For  my  own  part,  I  think  the  change  a  sign  of 
nature's  restorative  power,  and  see  in  it  the  stirrings 
of  new  health ;  even  though  partially  brought  about 
by  temporary  scepticism,  I  cannot  deplore  it,  for  it 
shows  that  the  conscience  cannot  go  on  living  in  a 
pretence,  but,  in  retreating  from  things  of  which  it 
doubts,  gets  its  foot  upon  duties  which  it  knows.  In 
this  are  the  first  beginnings  of  new  religion  to  replace 
the  old ;  if  the  divine  earnestness  within  us  only 
shifts  and  does  not  die,  it  matters  little  what  becomes 
of  our  mere  theology ;  and  deep-hearted  practical 
faithfulness  is  not  separable  long  from  true-thoughted 
practical  faith. 


216  SILENCE    AND    MEDITATION. 

Let  us  admit,  then,  that  our  revolt  against  the  old 
spiritualism  has  come  about  in  quite  a  natural  way; 
that  it  was  fast  going  down  into  mere  moral  hypo- 
chondria ;  and  that,  to  work  the  cure,  it  was  inevita- 
ble that  the  world  (as  divines  opprobriously  term  it), 
i.  e.  the  opportunities  of  action  with  a  view  to  tem- 
poral good,  whether  personal  or  social,  should  reassert 
its  sway.  Like  the  sick  physician,  who  cannot  let 
his  pulse  alone  or  cease  to  speculate  on  his  sensa- 
tions, Christendom,  bewildered  by  its  own  deep 
knowledge  of  the  human  heart,  kept  too  inquiring  a 
finger  on  the  throbs  of  its  emotions,  and  fancied 
many  an  action  of  healthy  nature  into  a  symptom 
of  fatal  disease ;  we  are  not  to  find  fault  with  the 
remedy  of  Providence,  —  a  turn-out  into  the  open 
air  and  various  industry  of  life ;  a  resort  to  the 
plough,  the  loom,  the  ship,  and  all  the  arts  by  which 
it  is  given  to  man  to  make  the  earth  at  once  his 
subject  and  his  friend.  But  let  us  also  admit  that 
the  outward  life  has  for  some  time  past  tyrannized 
over  us  ;  extravagantly  invading  our  private  habits  ; 
narrowing  our  modes  of  thought  and  sentiment ; 
benumbing  our  consciousness  of  a  spiritual  nature  ; 
and  impairing  to  us  the  reality  of  God.  Let  us  own 
that  the  Divine  spirit  is  gone  into  distance  and 
strangeness  from  us,  and  is  hard  to  reach ;  that 
solitude  brings  no  unspeakable  converse,  no  ready 
consecration ;  that  things  just  next  the  senses  and 
understanding  seem  nearer  to  us  than  those  that 
touch  the  soul ;  that  the  crowd  and  noise  are  too 
close  and  constant  on  us,  confusing  our  better  per- 
ceptions, and  leading  us  always  to  look  round, 
seldom  to  look  up ;  that  the  glare  of  the  lamps  has 
destroyed  the  midnight  and  put  out  the  stars. 


SILENCE    AND    MEDITATION.  217 

Now  this  despotism  of  the  outward  over  the  in- 
ward life,  this  suppression  of  every  attribute  not 
immediately  wanted  for  business  or  society,  is  a 
misfortune  which  every  noble  mind  will  assuredly 
withstand.  It  is  not  right  to  live  as  if  God  were 
asleep,  and  Heaven  only  a  murmur  from  his  dreams. 
It  should  make  some  difference  to  a  man,  whether 
his  Creator  be  here  in  the  present,  or  gone  off  into 
the  past;  whether  he  himself  dwells  in  the  hollow 
of  a  living  hand,  or,  with  nothing  beyond  him  but 
necessity,  struggles  for  his  place  in  a  dead,  deserted 
world.  And  this  difference  will  not  be  realized,  nor 
any  lofty  truth  of  character  attained,  by  those  who 
disown  the  claims  of  lonely  thought  and  silence  in 
religion. 

There  is  an  act  of  the  mind,  natural  to  the  earnest 
and  the  wise,  impossible  only  to  the  sensual  and  the 
fool,  healthful  to  all  who  are  sincere,  which  has  small 
place  in  modern  usage,  and  which  few  can  now  dis- 
tinguish from  vacuity.  Those  who  knew  what  it 
was,  called  it  meditation.  It  is  not  reading-,  in  which 
we  apprehend  the  thoughts  of  others,  and  bring  them 
to  our  critical  tribunal.  It  is  not  study,  in  which  we 
strive  to  master  the  known  and  prevail  over  it,  till  it 
lies  in  order  beneath  our  feet.  It  is  not  reasoning,  in 
which  we  seek  to  push  forward  the  empire  of  our 
positive  conceptions,  and  by  combining  what  we 
have,  reach  others  that  we  have  not.  It  is  not  delib- 
eration, which  computes  the  particular  problems  of 
action,  reckons  up  the  forces  that  surround  our  indi- 
vidual lot,  and  projects  accordingly  the  expedient  or 
the  right.  It  is  not  self-scrutiny,  which  by  itself  is 
only  shrewdness,  or  at  most  science  turned  within 
instead  of  without,  and  analyzing  mental  feelings 
19 


218  SILENCE    AND    MEDITATION. 

instead   of  physical  facts.     Its  view  is  not  personal 
and   particular,   but   universal   and   immense,  —  the 
sweep  of  the  nocturnal  telescope  over  the  infinitely 
great,  not  the  insight  of  the  solar  microscope  into 
the  infinitely  small.     It  brings,  not  an  intense  self- 
consciousness   and   spiritual   egotism,  but  almost  a 
renunciation  of  individuality,  a  mingling  with  the 
universe,  a  lapse  of  our  little  drop  of  existence  into 
the  boundless  ocean  of  being.     It  does  not  find  for 
us  our  place  in  the  known  world,  but  loses  it  for  us 
in  the  unknown.     It  puts  nothing  clearly  beneath 
our  feet,  but  a  vault   of   awful  beauty  above   our 
head.     It  gives  us  no  matter  for  criticism  and  doubt, 
but  everything  for  wonder  and  for  love.      It   does 
not    suggest   indirect   demonstration,    but  furnishes 
immediate  perception  of  things  divine,  eye  to  eye 
with  the  saints,  spirit  to  spirit  with   God,  peace  to 
peace  with   Heaven.     In  thus  being  alone  with  the 
truth  of  things,  and  passing  from  shows  and  shadows 
into  communion  with  the  everlasting  One,  there  is 
nothing  at  all  impossible  and  out  of  reach.     He  is 
not  faded  or  slow  to  bring  his  light  any  more  than 
his  sunshine,  which  is  bright  and  swift  as  ever.     He 
was  no  nearer  to  Christ  on  Tabor  or  in  Gethsemane, 
than   to   us   this  day  and  every  day.     Neither  the 
nature   he   inspires,   nor    his    perennial    inspiration, 
grows   any   older  with  the    lapse   of  time.      Every 
human  being  that  is  born  is  a  first  man,  fresh  in 
this   creation,  and  as  open  to   Heaven  as  if  Eden 
were  spread  round  him  ;  and  every  blessed  kindling 
of  faith  and  new  sanctity  is  a  touch  of  his  spirit  as 
living,  a  gift  as  immediate  from  his  exhaustless  store 
of  holy  power,  as  the  strength  that  befriended  Christ 
in  temptation,  and  the  angel-calm   that  closed  his 


SILENCE    AND    MEDITATION. 


agony.  Is  it  not  promised  for  ever  to  the  pure  in 
heart  that  they  shall  see  God  ?  Let  any  true  man 
go  into  silence  ;  strip  himself  of  all  pretence,  and 
selfishness,  and  sensuality,  and  sluggishness  of  soul  ; 
lift  off  thought  after  thought,  passion  after  passion, 
till  he  reaches  the  inmost  deep  of  all  ;  remember  how 
short  a  time,  and  he  was  not  at  all  ;  how  short  a 
time  again,  and  he  will  not  be  here  ;  open  his  win- 
dow and  look  upon  the  night,  how  still  its  breath, 
how  solemn  its  march,  how  deep  its  perspective,  how 
ancient  its  forms  of  light  ;  and  think  how  little  he 
knows  except  the  perpetuity  of  God,  and  the  myste- 
riousness  of  life  ;  and  it  will  be  strange  if  he  does 
not  feel  the  Eternal  Presence  as  close  upon  his  soul, 
as  the  breeze  upon  his  brow  ;  if  he  does  not  say,  '  O 
Lord,  art  thou  ever  near  as  this,  and  have  I  not 
known  thee  ?  '  —  if  the  true  proportions  and  the 
genuine  spirit  of  life  do  not  open  on  his  heart  with 
infinite  clearness,  and  show  him  the  littleness  of  his 
temptations,  and  the  grandeur  of  his  trust.  He  is 
ashamed  to  have  found  weariness  in  toil  so  light, 
and  tears  where  there  was  no  trial  to  the  brave.  He 
discovers  with  astonishment  how  small  the  dust  that 
has  blinded  him,  and  from  the  height  of  a  quiet  and 
holy  love,  looks  down  with  incredulous  sorrow  on 
the  jealousies,  and  fears,  and  irritations,  that  have 
vexed  his  life.  A  mighty  wind  of  Resolution  sits  in 
strong  upon  him,  and  freshens  the  whole  atmosphere 
of  his  soul  ;  sweeping  down  before  it  the  light  flakes 
of  difficulty,  till  they  vanish  like  snow  upon  the  sea. 
He  is  imprisoned  no  more  in  a  small  compartment  of 
time,  but  belongs  to  an  eternity  which  is  now  and 
here.  The  isolation  of  his  separate  spirit  passes 
away;  and  with  the  countless  multitude  of  souls 


220  SILENCE    AND    MEDITATION. 

akin  to  God,  he  is  but  as  a  wave  of  His  unbounded 
deep.  He  is  at  one  with  Heaven,  and  hath  found  the 
secret  place  of  the  Almighty. 

Silence  is  in  truth  the  attribute  of  God  ;  and  those 
who  "seek  him  from  that  side  invariably  learn,  that 
meditation  is  not  the  dream,  but  the  reality  of  life ; 
not  its  illusion,  but  its  truth  ;  not  its  weakness,  but 
its  strength.  Such  act  of  the  mind  is  quite  needful, 
in  order  to  rectify  the  estimates  of  the  senses  and  the 
lower  understanding,  to  shake  off  the  drowsy  order 
of  perceptions,  in  which,  with  the  eyes  of  the  soul 
half  closed,  we  are  apt  to  doze  away  existence  here. 
Neglecting  it  now,  we  shall  wake  into  it  hereafter, 
and  find  that  we  have  been  walking  in  our  sleep. 
It  is  necessary  even  to  preserve  the  truthfulness  of 
our  practical  life.  It  is  always  the  tendency  of 
action  to  fall  into  routine  and  become  mechanical ; 
to  become  less  and  less  dependent  on  the  living 
forces  of  the  Will,  and  to  continue  itself  by  mere 
momentum  in  the  direction  it  has  once  assumed. 
When  conscience  and  not  passion  presides  over  life, 
this  tendency  is  not  abated  but  confirmed ;  for  con- 
science is  essentially  systematic,  subdues  everything 
to  a  fixed  order,  and  then  is  troubled  or  content,  ac- 
cording as  this  is  violated  or  observed.  But  the  inner 
spirit  of  the  mind,  which  all  outward  action  should 
express,  is  not  naturally  thus  inflexible ;  it  drifts 
away  from  its  old  anchorages,  and  gets  afloat  upon 
new  tides  of  thought ;  as  experience  deepens,  exist- 
ence ceases  to  be  the  same,  and  the  proportions  in 
which  things  lie  within  our  affections  are  materially 
changed;  as  the  ascent  of  time  is  made,  life  is  seen 
from  a  higher  point,  and  fresh  fields  of  truth  and  duty 
spread  before  our  view.  Habit  being  conservative, 


SILENCE    AND    MEDITATION.  221 

faith  and  feeling  being  progressive,  unless  their  mu- 
tual relation  be  constantly  re-adjusted  by  meditation, 
they  will  cease  to  correspond,  and  become  miserably 
divergent ;  our  action  will  not  be  true,  our  thought 
will  not  be  real;  both  will  be  weak  and  dead  ;  both 
distrustful  as  a  culprit ;  both  relying  on  hollow  credit, 
and  empty  of  solid  wealth ;  and  our  whole  life, 
begun  perhaps  in  the  order  of  conscience,  and  mov- 
ing on  externally  the  same,  may  become  a  semblance 
and  a  cheat.  Bare  moral  principle,  unless  holding  of 
something  more  divine,  affords  but  an  unsafe  tenure 
of  the  wisdom  and  the  strength  of  life. 

And  even  when  the  right  is  clearly  seen,  meditation 
is  needed  to  collect  our  powers  to  do  it.  It  is  the 
great  storehouse  of  our  spiritual  dynamics,  where 
divine  energies  lie  hid  for  any  enterprise,  and  the 
hero  is  strengthened  for  his  field.  All  great  things 
are  born  of  silence.  The  fury  indeed  of  destructive 
passion  may  start  up  in  the  hot  conflict  of  life,  and 
go  forth  with  tumultuous  desolation  ;  but  all  bene- 
ficent and  creative  power  gathers  itself  together  in 
silence,  ere  it  issues  out  in  might.  Force,  itself, 
indeed,  is  naturally  silent,  and  makes  itself  heard,  if 
at  all,  when  it  strikes  upon  obstructions,  to  bear  them 
away  as  it  returns  to  equilibrium  again.  The  very 
hurricane  that  roars  over  land  and  ocean,  flits  noise- 
lessly through  spaces  where  nothing  meets  it.  The 
blessed  sunshine  says  nothing,  as  it  warms  the  vernal 
earth,  tempts  out  the  tender  grass,  and  decks  the  field 
and  forest  in  their  glory.  Silence  came  before  crea- 
tion, and  the  heavens  were  spread  without  a  word. 
Christ  was  born  at  dead  of  night ;  and  though  there 
has  been  no  power  like  his, '  he  did  not  strive  nor  cry, 
neither  was  his  voice  heard  in  the  streets.'  Nowhere 
16* 


222  SILENCE    AND    MEDITATION. 

can  you  find  any  beautiful  work,  any  noble  design, 
any  durable  endeavor,  that  was  not  matured  in  long 
and  patient  silence,  ere  it  spake  out  in  its  accomplish- 
ment. There  it  is  that  we  accumulate  the  inward 
power  which  we  distribute  and  spend  in  action  ;  put 
the  smallest  duty  before  us  in  dignified  and  holy  as- 
pects ;  and  reduce  the  severest  hardships  beneath  the 
foot  of  our  self-denial.  There  it  is  that  the  soul,  en- 
larging all  its  dimensions  at  once,  acquires  a  greater 
and  more  vigorous  being,  and  gathers  up  its  collec- 
tive forces  to  bear  down  upon  the  piece-meal  difficul- 
ties of  life,  and  scatter  them  to  dust.  There  alone 
can  we  enter  into  that  spirit  of  self-abandonment,  by 
which  we  take  up  the  cross  of  duty,  however  heavy, 
with  feet  however  worn  and  bleeding  they  may  be. 
And  thither  shall  we  return  again,  not  only  into 
higher  peace  and  more  triumphant  power,  when 
the  labor  is  over  and  the  victory  won,  and  we  are 
called  by  death  into  God's  loftiest  watch-tower  of 
Contemplation. 


XVIII. 

WINTER   WORSHIP. 

JOHN  v.  13. 

AND   HE   THAT   WAS   HEALED   WIST   NOT   WHO   IT   WAS. 

IF  the  first  power  of  Christianity  was  embodied  in 
miracle,  it  was  in  miracle  so  distinctly  expressive  of 
its  spirit,  and  so  analogous  to  its  natural  agency  in 
the  world,  as  to  invite  rather  than  repel  our  imitation. 
Whatever  be  meant  by  the  two  great  preternatural 
endowments  entrusted  to  its  earliest  missionaries, — 
the  gift  of  tongues  and  the  gift  of  healing,  —  they 
represent  clearly  enough  the  two  grand  functions  of 
our  religion,  — to  bear  persuasion  to  the  minds*  and 
bring  mercy  to  the  physical  ills,  of  men.  On  that 
summer-morning  in  Jerusalem,  when  the  men  of 
Galilee  stood  forth  within  the  temple-courts  to  preach 
the  first  glad  tidings  to  the  strangers  of  Parthia,  and 
Greece,  and  Rome,  and  with  their  speech  reached 
the  minds  of  that  multitude  of  many  tongues,  what 
better  symbol  could  there  be  of  that  religion,  whose 
spirit  is  intelligible  to  all,  because  it  addresses  itself 
to  the  universal  human  heart,  and  speaks,  not  the 
artificial  jargon  of  sects  and  nations,  but  the  natural 
language  of  the  affections,  which  are  immortal.  And 
when  the  crowd  of  weary  sufferers  thronged  around 
the  Apostle's  steps  in  the  city,  the  blind  supporting 
the  lame,  and  the  lame  eyes  to  the  blind ;  or  when 


224  AVIXTEK    "WORSHIP. 

the  solitary  leper  saw  them  in  the  field,  and  made  his 
gesture  of  entreaty  from  afar,  and  all  were  healed, 
how  better  could  be  represented  the  character  of  that 
faith  which  has  never  set  eyes  on  pain  without  yield- 
ing it  a  tear ;  which  in  proportion  as  it  has  been 
cordially  embraced,  has  sickened  the  heart  of  scenes 
of  suffering  and  blood,  and  lessened,  age  after  age,  the 
stripes  wherewith  humanity  is  stricken.  We  neither 
claim  nor  ask  for  the  cloven  tongues  of  a  divine  per- 
suasion ;  we  boast  not  of  any  arm  of  miracle  which 
we  can  lay  bare  in  conflict  with  disease  and  sorrow  ; 
but  in  the  spirit  of  these  acts  of  Providence  we  may 
participate.  While  fanatics  vainly  pretend  to  repeat 
their  marvellousness,  we  may  chose  the  better  part, 
and  copy  their  beneficence.  The  world  needs  the 
preachers  of  wonders,  less  than  the  apostles  of 
charity. 

And  amid  all  the  splendors  of  miracle,  nothing 
could  be  more  unostentatious  than  the  diffusion  of 
Christ's  mercy  by  its  missionaries  in  the  days  of  old. 
Beginning  at  the  provinces  of  Palestine,  it  passed, 
from  village  to  village  of  the  interior,  from  city  to 
city  of  the  vast  empire's  various  coast;  along  the 
shores  of  Asia,  beneath  the  citadels  of  Greece,  to  the 
world's  great  palace  on  the  Tiber,  it  stole  along,  fleet 
and  silent  as  the  wind  that  bloweth  where  it  listeth, 
sweeping  through  every  foul  recess,  and  leaving 
health  where  it  found  pestilence.  Our  imagination, 
corrupted  by  the  vanity  of  history,  dwells  perhaps 
too  much  on  the  more  brilliant  positions  and  marked 
triumphs  of  the  ancient  gospel.  We  follow  Paul 
through  his  vicissitudes,  and  feel  an  idle  pride  in  his 
most  conspicuous  adventures;  and  when  he  stretches 
forth  the  hand  and  speaks  before  king  Agrippa;  when 


WIXTEB    WORSHIP.  225 

idolaters  mistake  the  bearer  of  a  godlike  message  for 
a  god,  and  bow  before  him  as  to  Mercury ;  when  in 
Ephesus  he  becomes  the  rival  of  Diana,  and  ruins  the 
craftsmen  of  silver  shrines;  when  philosophy  listens 
to  him  on  Areopagus,  and  the  Furies  still  slumber 
within  hearing  in  their  grove,  —  we  vainly  think  that 
he  derives  his  greatest  dignity  from  the  scenes  in  the 
midst  of  which  he  stands,  a  contrast  and  a  stranger. 
As  we  would  deserve  the  Christian  name,  let  us  look 
more  deeply  into  his  mission,  and  adopt  more  fully 
the  spirit  of  his  mind.  Watch  him  even  in  Rome, 
where  he  dwelt,  though  a  prisoner,  in  his  own  hired 
house ;  and  where  shall  we  seek  for  him  in  that  daz- 
zling metropolis  ?  He  was  not  one  to  pass  through  its 
scenes  of  magnificence  with  stupid  and  fanatic  in- 
difference, to  find  himself  surrounded  by  the  monu- 
ments of  ancient  freedom,  and  listen  for  the  first  time 
to  the  very  language  of  the  world's  conquerors,  with- 
out catching  the  inspiration  of  history,  feeling  the 
solemn  shadow  of  the  past  fall  upon  him.  I  do  not 
say  that  he  never  paused  beneath  the  senate-house  to 
think  of  the  voices  that  had  been  heard  within  its 
walls ;  or  climbed  the  capitol,  once  the  palace  of  the 
republic,  now  its  shrine ;  or  started  at  the  fasces,  stern 
emblem  of  a  justice  now  no  more ;  or  went  without 
excitement  into  the  imperial  presence  through  the 
very  gardens  where  his  own  blood  shall  hereafter  be 
shed  in  merriment.  But  his  daily,  walks  passed  all 
these  splendors  by;  they  dived  into  the  lanes  and 
suburbs  on  which  no  glory  of  history  is  shed,  and 
which  made  Rome  the  sink  and  curse,  while  it  was 
the  ruler  of  the  nations ;  they  found  the  haunts  of  the 
scorned  Hebrew ;  they  startled  the  degraded  revels  of 
the  slave ;  they  sought  out  the  poor  foreigner,  attract- 


WINTER    WOKSHIP 


ed  by  the  city's  wealth,  and  perishing  amid  its  deso- 
lation; they  crept  to  the  pallet  on  which  fever  and 
poverty  were  stretched,  tendering  the  hand  of  restora- 
tion, and  whispering  the  lessons  of  peace.  This  was 
his  noblest  dignity  ;  not  that  he  publicly  pleaded  be- 
fore princes,  but  that  he  secretly  solaced  the  outcast 
and  the  friendless  ;  not  that  he  paced  the  forum,  but 
that  he  lingered  in  the  dens  of  wretchedness,  and  re- 
freshed the  hardened  heart  with  gentle  sympathies, 
and  linked  the  alien  with  the  fraternity  of  men,  and 
dropped  upon  the  darkest  lot  the  spirit  of  Providence 
and  of  hope.  And  what  is  true  of  this  great  apostle, 
is  true  of  the  religion  which  he  spread,  and  which  we 
profess.  Its  true  dignity  is,  that  unseen  it  has  ever 
gone  about  doing  good.  Link  after  link  has  it  struck 
from  the  chain  of  every  human  thraldom  ;  error  after 
error  has  it  banished  ;  pain  after  pain  has  it  driven 
from  body  or  from  mind;  and  so  silently  has  the  bless- 
ing come,  that  (like  the  lame  whom  Peter  made  to 
walk)  '  he  that  was  healed  wist  not  who  it  was.' 

It  can  never  be  unseasonable  for  those  that  bear 
the  name  of  Christ  to  imitate  his  spirit,  and  to 
address  themselves  to  the  great  mission  which  Provi- 
dence has  assigned  to  their  religion  (that  is,  to  them- 
selves), as  the  antagonist  power  to  those  human 
sufferings,  which  may  be  lightened  at  least,  if  not 
remedied.  But  this  period  of  the  year*  brings  with 
it  a  distinct  and  .peculiar  call  to  remember  with  a 
thought  of  mercy  the  several  ills  that  flesh  is  heir  to. 
Every  season  has  its  appropriate  worship,  and  de- 
mands an  appropriate  recognition  ;  for  each  presents 
in  some  peculiar  form  the  physical  activity  of  nature, 

*  This  discourse  was  preached  at  the  end  of  November. 


WINTER    WORSHIP.  227 

which  is,  in  fact,  the  spiritual  energy  of  God.  If,  in 
the  picturesque  spirit  of  ancient  times,  we  had  our 
annual  festivals  for  remembering  the  several  aspects  of 
our  lot,  and  bringing  successively  before  the  eye  the 
many-colored  phases  of  human  existence,  we  should 
cast  lots  among  the  days  of  spring  for  an  anniversary 
of  life  and  health,  when  earth  is  unburthening  her 
mighty  heart  to  God,  and  framing  from  a  thousand 
new-born  melodies  an  anthem  of  brilliant  praise. 
For  the  celebration  of  disease  and  death  we  should 
resort  to  the  days  of  the  declining  year ;  and  instead 
of  leaping  on  the  green  sod  and  pouring  forth  the 
hymn  of  joy,  we  should  kneel  upon  the  rotting  leaves 
and  pray.  However  constant  the  visitations  of  sick- 
ness and  bereavement,  the  fall  of  the  year  is  most 
thickly  strewn  with  the  fall  of  human  life.  Every- 
where the  spirit  of  some  sad  power  seems  to  direct 
the  time ;  it  hides  from  us  the  blue  heavens ;  it  makes 
the  green  wave  turbid ;  it  walks  through  the  fields, 
and  lays  the  damp,  ungathered  harvest  low ;  it  cries 
out  in  the  night-wind  and  the  shrill  hail ;  it  steals  the 
summer  bloom  from  the  infant  cheek;  it  makes  old 
age  shiver  to  the  heart ;  it  goes  to  the  churchyard,  and 
chooses  many  a  grave ;  it  flies  to  the  bell  and  enjoins 
it  when  to  toll.  It  is  God  that  goes  his  yearly  round; 
and  gathers  up  the  appointed  lives ;  and,  even  where 
the  hour  is  not  come,  engraves  by  pain  and  poverty 
many  a  sharp  and  solemn  lesson  on  the  heart. 

How,  then,  shall  we  render  the  fitting  worship  of 
the  season?  We  do  so,  when  we  think  of  these 
things  in  the  spirit  of  religion;  when  we  regard  them 
in  then:  relation  to  the  great  Will  wThich  produces 
them ;  when,  instead  of  meeting  them  in  the  spirit  of 
recklessness,  or  viewing  in  them  the  triumph  of  dis- 


228  WINTER    WORSHIP. 

order,  or  shrinking  from  them  in  imbecile  fear,  we 
recognize  their  position  in  a  sympathy  of  universal 
Providence,  various  in  its  means,  but  paternal  in  its 
spirit,  and  beneficent  in  its  ends ;  when  '  none  of  these 
things  move  us,'  except  to  a  more  reverential  sense  of 
mystery,  and  a  serener  depth  of  trust.  In  a  season 
of  mortality,  it  is  surely  impossible  to  forget  the  re- 
lations of  other  scenes  to  this;  that  departure  from 
this  life  is  birth  into  another ;  that  the  immortal  rises 
where  the  mortal  falls ;  that  the  farewell  in  the  vale 
below  is  followed  by  greetings  on  the  hills  above;  so 
that  if  sympathy  with  mourners  here  permit,  the  sor- 
rows of  the  bereaved  on  earth  are  the  festival  of  the 
redeemed  in  heaven. 

We  render  the  appropriate  worship  of  the  season, 
when  we  think  of  the  painful  passages  of  human  life, 
not  merely  as  proceeding  from  God,  but  as  incident 
to  our  own  lot;  not  merely  in  the  spirit  of  religion, 
but  in  that  of  self -application.  It  is  difficult  for  the 
living  and  the  vigorous  to  realize  the  idea  of  sickness 
and  of  death ;  and  though  within  a  few  paces  of  our 
daily  walks  there  are  beings  that  lie  in  the  last 
struggle,  and  some  sufferer's  moan  escapes  with  every 
breath  that  flies,  yet  whenever  pain  fairly  seizes  our 
persons  in  his  grasp,  or  enters  and  usurps  our  homes, 
we  start  as  if  he  were  a  stranger.  And  perhaps  it 
will  be  asked,  '  Why  should  it  be  otherwise  ?  Why 
forestal  the  inevitable  day,  and  let  the  damp  cloud  of 
expectation  fall  on  the  illumined  passages  of  life  ? ' 
I  grant  that  to  remember  the  conditions  of  our  exist- 
ence with  such  result  as  this,  to  think  of  them  in  an 
abject  and  melancholy  spirit,  is  no  act  of  wisdom  or 
of  duty.  I  know  of  no  obligation  to  live  with  an 
imagination  ever  haunted  by  mortality;  to  deem 


•WINTER    AVORSHIP.  229 

every  enjoyment  dangerous,  lest  it  cheat  the  heart 
into  a  happy  repose  upon  the  present,  and  every 
pursuit  a  snare,  which  fairly  embarks  the  affections 
upon  this  world ;  to  consider  all  things  here  devoid  of 
any  good  purpose,  except  to  tempt  us.  The  theory 
which  crowds  this  life  with  trials  and  the  other 
with  rewards,  which  brightens  the  future  only  by 
blackening  the  present,  which  supposes  that  the  only 
proper  office  of  our  residence  here  is  to  keep  up  one 
prolonged  meditation  on  the  hereafter,  is  a  mere 
burlesque  of  nature  and  the  gospel.  Futurity  is  not 
to  rnar,  but  to  mend  our  activity ;  and  earth  is  not 
given  that  we  may  win  the  reversion  of  heaven,  so 
much  as  heaven  revealed  to  ennoble  our  tenure  of 
earth.  I  know  of  no  peculiar  preparation  for  immor- 
tality beyond  the  faithful  performance  of  the  best 
functions  of  mortal  life ;  and  if  it  were  not  that  these 
will  be  more  wisely  discharged,  and  the  attendant 
blessing  more  truly  felt,  by  those  who  remember 
the  sadder  conditions  of  our  lot  than  by  those  who 
forget  them,  there  would  be  no  reason  why  they 
should  ever  appear  before  the  thoughts.  But  they 
are  facts,  solemn  and  inevitable  facts,  which  come 
with  least  crushing  power  on  those  who  see  them 
from  afar,  and  become  reconciled  to  them,  and  even 
fill  them  by  forethought  with  peaceful  suggestion. 
The  sense  of  their  possibility  breaks  through  the 
superficial  crust  of  life,  and  stirs  up  the  deeper  affec- 
tions of  our  nature.  It  refines  the  sacredness  of 
every  human  tie;  it  dignifies  the  claims  of  duty;  it 
freshens  the  emotions  of  conscience ;  it  gives  prompti- 
tude to  the  efforts  of  sympathy;  and  elevates  the 
whole  attitude  of  life. 

But,  above  all,  we  pay  the  fitting  worship  of  the 
20 


230  WINTER    WORSHIP. 

season,  when  we  greet  its  peculiar  ills  in  the  spirit  of 
humanity;  when  we  think  of  them  not  simply  as  they 
come  from  God,  and  may  come  to  ourselves,  but  as 
they  actually  do  befall  our  neighbors  and  fellow-men. 
It  were  selfish  to  gather  round  our  firesides,  and  cir- 
culate the  laugh  of  cheerfulness  and  health,  without 
a  thought  or  deed  of  pity  for  the  poor  sufferers  that 
struggle  with  the  urinter  storms  of  nature  or  of  life. 
Who  can  help  looking  at  this  season  with  a  more 
considerate  and  reverential  eye  upon  the  old  man,  to 
think,  where  he  may  be  ?  Year  after  year  he  has 
been  shaken  by  the  December  winds,  but  not  yet 
shaken  to  his  fall ;  deeper  and  deeper  the  returning 
frost  has  crept  into  his  nature, —  and  will  it  reach  the 
life-stream  now?  You  watch  him,  as  you  would 
the  last  pendulous  leaf  of  the  forest,  still  held  by 
some  capricious  fibre,  that  refuses  perhaps  to  part 
with  it  to  the  storm,  and  then  drops  it  slowly  through 
the  still  air.  You  gaze  at  him  as  he  stands  before 
you,  and  wonder  that  you  can  ever  do  so  without 
awe;  for  the  visible  margin  of  existence  crumbles 
beneath  him,  and  he  slips  into  the  unfathomable. 
And  as  the  tempest  wakes  us  on  our  pillow,  it  is  but 
common  justice  to  our  human  heart,  to  send  out  a 
thought  over  the  cold  and  vexed  sea  in  search  of  the 
poor  mariner  that  buffets  with  the  night,  or  perhaps 
sinks  in  that  most  lonely  of  deaths,  between  the  black 
heavens  that  pelt  him  from  above  and  the  insatiable 
waste  that  swallows  him  below.  Nor  will  generous 
and  faithful  souls  forget  the  dingy  cellar  or  the 
crowded  hovel,  where  in  a  neighboring  street  the 
fevered  sufferer  lies,  and  the  ravings  of  delirium  and 
the  sports  of  children  are  heard  together,  or  life  is 
ebbing  away  in  consumption,  hurried  to  its  close  by 


WINTER    WORSHIP.  231 

the  chill  breath  of  poverty  and  winter.  O  could  we 
but  see  the  dread  gripe  of  want  and  disease  upon 
hundreds  of  this  community  at  this  moment,  and 
hear  the  cries  of  hungry  children  and  the  moan  of 
untended  sickness,  the  only  difficulty  would  be,  not 
to  stimulate  our  generosity  to  do  enough,  but  to  per- 
suade it  to  work  out  its  good  with  patience  and  with 
wisdom! 

And  here  indeed  is  a  difficulty,  which  every  con- 
siderate mind  will  feel  to  be  grave,  and  even  terrible. 
The  multitude  of  miseries  spread  around  us  make 
humanity  easy,  —  a  wise  direction  of  its  impulses, 
most  difficult;  the  very  spectacle  which  gives  to 
benevolence  its  intensity,  throws  it  also  into  despair. 
The  perplexity  arises  partly  from  the  state  of  society 
in  which  we  live ;  from  relations  among  its  several 
classes  altogether  new,  and  rendering  the  ancient  and 
traditional  methods  of  doing  good  in  a  great  degree 
in  applicable.  A  slave-owning  or  feudal  community, 
by  killing  out  from  the  great  mass  of  men  everything 
above  the  rank  of  hunger,  reduces  the  office  of  com- 
passion within  a  very  narrow  compass;  and  the  dish 
from  the  rich  man's  table,  or  the  garment  from  his 
wardrobe,  sent  as  to  the  domestic  animals  of  his  estate, 
to  stop  their  cries  and  soothe  them  to  sleep,  are  the  only 
boons  that  are  required,  or  possibly  that  can  be  given 
without  peril  of  social  revolution.  Happily,  yet  not 
without  much  unhappiness  too,  such  revolution  is 
now  effected  or  in  progress ;  greatly  through  the  in- 
fluence of  that  Christianity,  which  pronounces  all  to 
be  children  of  One  who  'is  no  respecter  of  persons;' 
and  assures  us  that  whenever  we  say,  'Be  thou 
warmed  and  filled,'  it  is  no  other  than  '  a  brother  or 
sister'  that  comes  before  us  'naked  and  destitute 


232  WINTER    WORSHIP. 

of  daily  food.'  Our  current  notions  of  benevolence 
have  descended  to  us  from  the  recent  times  of  feudal- 
ism ;  yet  we  are  conscious  that  they  do  not  come  up 
to  the  higher  demands  which  have  arisen,  or  adapt 
themselves  to  the  new  intellectual  and  moral  wants 
comprised  in  any  Christian  estimate  of  the  poor  of 
this  world.  The  ease  of  ancient  condescension  is 
gone ;  the  graceful  recognition  of  human  brotherhood 
is  not  attained.  To  aim  at  making  men  like  our- 
selves into  creatures  with  enough  to  eat, — though  a 
thing  unrealized  as  yet,  —  is  felt  to  be  insufficient; 
and  how  to  raise  them  into  the  likeness  of  the  chil- 
dren of  God  we  cannot  tell,  —  the  very  notion  receiv- 
ing at  present  but  a  timid  acknowledgment.  This, 
however,  if  we  are  in  earnest,  is  but  a  temporary 
difficulty,  attending  on  a  state  of  hesitancy  and  tran- 
sition. Let  the  mind  fairly  emancipate  itself  from 
that  debasing  valuation  of  a  human  being  which  the 
mere  sentiments  of  property  would  dictate ;  trust 
itself,  with  high  faith,  to  the  equalizing  spirit  of 
Christian  piety  and  hope ;  and  in  paying  to  all  the 
reverence  due  to  an  immortal,  it  will  attain  to  the 
freedom  and  power  of  a  divine  love, —  it  will  speak 
to  sorrow  with  the  voice  of  another  Christ,  and  re- 
store his  holiest  miracles  of  mercy.  Who  can  doubt, 
that  were  his  spirit  here,  the  work  of  good  need  not 
despair  ? 

But  for  want  of  this  spirit  in  perpetuity,  another 
obstacle  obstructs  the  course  of  bewildered  charity. 
We  form  our  good  intentions  too  late ;  and  while 
benevolence,  to  be  successful,  must  work  in  the  way 
of  prevention  and  anticipation,  —  at  the  very  least 
putting  resolutely  down  each  confused  and  hurtful 
thing  as  it  appears,  —  men  rarely  bestir  themselves 


WINTER    WORSHIP.  233 

till  evils  get  ahead,  and  by  no  effort  can  well  be  over- 
taken. The  physical,  moral,  and  religious  condition 
of  the  poor,  which  in  our  days  begin  to  excite  so 
much  attention,  should  have  been  studied  thus  half 
a  century  ago  ;  easy  in  comparison  had  it  then  been 
to  prevent  the  ills  which  now  we  know  not  how  to 
cure.  We  permit  a  generation  to  grow  up  neglected, 
with  habits  a  grade  below  their  fathers';  and  then 
consider  how  they  may  be  reclaimed.  We  suffer  a 
new  manufacture  to  start  into  existence,  and  seize, 
with  the  hands  of  a  needy  giant,  on  infant  labor; 
and  when  it  has  appropriated  a  generation  to  itself, 
and  boldly  insists  on  its  prescriptive  right  to  be  fed 
for  ever  from  the  same  life-blood  of  our  humanity, 
we  look  round  on  the  degenerate  bodies  and  stunted 
minds  of  an  enormous  population,  and  begin  to  cry 
out  for  an  efficient  public  education,  against  which 
the  immediate  physical  interests  of  poor  as  well  as 
rich  are  now  combined.  The  Providence  of  God  is 
retributory;  and  too  often  it  happens  that  the  sinful 
negligence  of  one  age  cannot  be  repaired  by  the 
penitent  benevolence  of  many.  The  unpaid  debt 
accumulates  its  interest,  till  discharge  becomes  im- 
possible. Misery  grows  impatient  and  clamorous ; 
and  repays  at  length  in  fury  the  injuries  inflicted  by 
ancient  wantonness  and  neglect.  Neither  in  com- 
munities, nor  in  individuals,  does  God  give  encour- 
agement to  death-bed  repentance  ;  and  societies  that 
trust  to  it  shall  find  themselves,  after  short  delay, 
under  the  lash  of  demons,  and  near  the  seat  of  Hell. 
Let  them  be  timely  wise,  and  maintain  the  vigils  of 
benevolence,  while  the  accepted  hour  remains. 

Amid  all  controversies  respecting  the  quarter  from 
which  the  assault  on  the  evils  of  indigence  is  best 
20* 


234  WINTER    WORSHIP. 

commenced,  whether  the  physical  wants  should  be 
remedied  through  the  moral,  or  the  moral  through 
the  physical,  whether  most  is  to  be  hoped  for  from 
legislative  measures,  or  from  individual  efforts,  one 
principle  may  be  regarded  as  certain,  and,  consider- 
ing the  tendencies  of  our  age,  not  unseasonable. 
You  cannot  mechanize  benevolence ;  you  cannot 
put  Christian  love  into  an  act  of  parliament,  or  a 
subscription -list ;  and  however  necessary  may  be  the 
remedial  action  of  laws  and  institutions,  on  account 
of  the  comprehensive  scale  of  their  operation,  the 
ties  between  man  and  man  can  be  drawn  closer  only 
by  personal  agency.  Not  one  new  sympathy  can 
arise  but  by  the  contact  between  mind  and  mind. 
In  the  spiritual  world  life  is  born  only  of  life ;  nor 
is  any  abrogation  possible  of  that  law  of  God  which 
requires  that  we  seek  whatever  we  would  save.  The 
good  comfort  which  with  willing  soul  we  tender  to 
each  other  is  of  all  things  most  precious  to  the  heart. 
As  the  blow  of  calamity  falls  with  threefold  weight 
when  it  descends  from  the  injustice  of  men,  so  the 
deliverance  brought  by  their  pity  and  affection  is  a 
blessing  infinitely  multiplied.  The  one  poisons  and 
prevents  our  submission,  as  to  a  will  of  God ;  the 
other  sweetens  and  elevates  our  gratitude  to  him. 
The  one  cancels,  the  other  creates,  what  is  most 
divine  in  the  dispensation.  Only  so  far  as  there  is 
a  '  charity'  that  'never  faileth'  from  the  souls  of  men, 
can  they  live  in  communion  together  on  this  earth ; 
and  from  Christendom  every  '  faith '  shall  be  cast  out 
as  a  dead  heathenism,  except  such  as  '  worketh  by 
love.' 


XIX. 

THE    GREAT   YEAR   OF   PROVIDENCE. 
2  PETER  in.  4. 

WHERE  IS  THE  PROMISE  OF  HIS  COMING?  FOR,  SINCE  THE  FATHERS 
FELL  ASLEEP,  ALL  THINGS  CONTINUE  AS  THEY  WERE  FROM  THE  BE- 
GINNING OF  THE  CREATION. 

CHRIST  quitted  the  world  in  benediction,  and  left 
upon  it  a  legacy  of  inextinguishable  hope.  The  first 
manifestation  of  the  hopeful  spirit  of  his  religion  was 
in  the  expectation,  confidently  held  by  the  Apostles 
and  their  followers,  that  within  '  that  generation '  he 
would  return  from  Heaven  in  triumph,  gather  to- 
gether a  faithful  community,  exterminate  the  ills  of 
human  life,  and  become  monarch  over  a  renovated 
and  immortal  world.  Sufferers  of  every  class  (and 
the  church  had  mercy  for  them  all)  laid  this  hope  to 
heart,  and  stood  silent  beneath  scorn  and  persecution, 
believing  that  the  lashes  of  oppression  were  num- 
bered now.  As  the  years  passed  on,  and  the  outer 
limits  of  the  generation  were  approached,  the  flush 
of  expectation  became  more  intense.  One  after 
another  the  Apostles  dropped  off,  without  witnessing 
the  desire  of  their  eyes ;  till  at  last  the  protracted 
life  of  John  became  the  solitary  and  fragile  thread 
on  which  this  splendid  anticipation  hung.  He,  too, 
died,  and  Jesus  had  not  returned;  and  the  church, 
unwilling  to  confess  its  disappointment,  extended  the 


236        THE  GREAT  YEAR  OF  PROVIDENCE. 

term  of  hope  by  a  liberal  construction  of  the  promise. 
Here  and  there  among  the  communities  of  disciples 
there  lingered  a  few  aged  men  whose  life  reached 
back  to  the  years  of  Christ's  ministry ;  and  till  they 
were  gone,  it  was  not  too  late  for  the  Son  of  Man 
to  come.  Expectation  became  more  anxious  and 
feverish  every  year  ;  passing  events  were  perverted 
into  auguries  of  its  impending  realization ;  the  rout 
of  an  army,  the  incursion  of  a  new  invader,  the  rumor 
of  an  earthquake,  the  blaze  of  meteor  by  night,  or  a 
stroke  of  lightning  upon  a  Pagan  shrine,  was  caught 
at  with  breathless  eagerness,  and  watched  as  a  herald 
to  the  last  act  of  human  things.  But  as  storm  after 
storm  passed  off  and  brought  no  change ;  as  life 
after  life  disappeared,  and  even  rumor  could  find  no- 
where a  surviving  representative  of  Christ's  genera- 
tion, hope  fainted  into  doubt;  and  despair  broke 
loose  and  cried,  '  Where  is  the  promise  of  his  coming? 
for  since  the  fathers  fell  asleep,  all  things  continue  as 
they  were  from  the  beginning  of  the  creation.'  No 
brilliant  exultation  longer  cheered  the  woes  of  the 
church  and  of  the  world ;  they  fell  back  again  with 
their  dull  weight  upon  the  heart.  The  Christian 
mother  wept  now  for  her  martyred  son,  whom,  in  the 
thought  of  instant  restoration,  she  had  forgot  to 
mourn ;  the  despised  teacher  began  to  cower  before 
the  Heathen's  or  the  Hebrew's  scorn,  which  he  knew 
no  longer  how  to  answer  ;  and  the  irons  of  the  Chris- 
tian field-slave,  to  which  for  years  his  faith  had  given 
a  farewell  look  each  night  before  he  slept,  grew  heavy 
on  his  limbs  again. 

Almost  eighteen  hundred  years  separate  us  from 
the  disappointment  of  this  singular  expectation  ;  and 
the  calmness  with  which  we  can  look  back  on  a 


THE  GREAT  YEAR  OF  PROVIDENCE.        237 

scene  so  distant,  enables  us  to  draw  from  it  a  sacred 
lesson  of  Providence.  Well  might  God  rebuke  and 
disappoint  this  affectionate  but  erring  hope  ;  for  what 
did  it  assume  ?  That  a  few  years'  preaching  of  a 
pure  religion,  and  the  forcible  enthronement  upon 
earth  of  one  who  had  lived  in  Heaven,  were  all  that 
was  necessary  for  perfecting  the  world,  for  driving 
sin  and  sorrow  from  the  hearts  and  homes  of  men, 
and  giving  life  its  final  sanctity.  How  imperfect 
was  the  estimate  of  this  regenerative  work,  which 
could  assign  it  to  instruments  so  inadequate,  and  a 
process  so  brief!  God  has  taught  us  now,  that  a 
moral  change  so  various  and  stupendous,  implying 
the  civilization  of  barbarism,  the  illumination  of  the 
ignorant,  the  rescue  of  the  oppressed,  the  pacification 
of  nations,  the  multiplication  of  Christ's  own  spirit 
of  humanity  over  the  globe,  is  not  to  be  wrought  in 
an  hour  by  Omnipotence  itself;  is  beyond  the  reach 
of  any  mechanical  scheme  of  rule,  though  conducted 
by  beings  of  another  world ;  and  must  wait  on  the 
silent  operation  of  those  spiritual  laws  of  the  human 
mind,  which  neither  the  individual  nor  the  race  can 
be  permitted  to  outstrip.  We  look  back  over  the 
centuries  by  which  we  have  retired  from  the  foun- 
tains of  our  faith,  and  learn  how  solemn  is  the  task 
of  Providence  on  earth  ;  for  he  labors  at  it  still ;  and 
though  its  progress  has  been  visible  to  this  hour,  it 
seems  but  starting  on  its  cycle  yet. 

Who  will  not  confess  a  strong  sympathy  with  the 
early  Christian's  delight,  in  anticipating  certain  great 
and  divine  revolutions  within  their  own  generation? 
That  human  life  is  too  short  to  witness  the  fruits 
of  its  own  efforts ;  that  it  scatters  in  seed-time,  but 
may  not  put  the  sickle  to  its  own  harvest ;  that  its 


238        THE  GREAT  YEAR  OF  PROVIDENCE. 

whole  career  from  infancy  to  age  scarce  measures  a 
solitary  step  in  the  march  of  humanity,  has  always 
been  felt  to  be  an  arrangement  hard  to  bear.  And 
there  is  a  peculiar  fascination  in  the  thought  of  per- 
sonally experiencing  the  realization  of  one's  social 
dreams,  of  quickening  a  too  tardy  Providence  to  the 
pace  of  our  fleeting  years,  and  rinding  our  race  of 
man  give  promise  of  perfection,  during  our  mortal 
instead  of  our  immortal  lives.  It  is  the  severest  and 
sublimest  duty  of  philanthropy  to  toil  in  faith  and 
die  in  tears ;  to  grapple  with  ills  that  must  survive  it, 
and  may  destroy;  to  remonstrate  with  oppression, 
and  only  see  its  gripe  tightened  on  its  victim  in 
revenge.  The  mistake  of  the  early  church  is  not 
theirs  alone ;  it  is  a  human,  rather  than  a  theological 
error.  All  men  have  the  prime  element  of  such  a 
superstition  in  themselves;  an  impatience  at  the  slow 
step  of  advancement,  an  eagerness  for  some  visible 
and  palpable  progress  in  everything  which  is  thought 
capable  of  indefinite  improvement.  Such  delusion, 
is  the  only  way  in  which  the  human  soul  can  get  into 
God's  everlasting  NOW.'  Yet,  while  really  springing 
from  a  noble  faith,  it  produces,  in  its  reaction,  many 
an  ignoble  doubt.  This  disposition  looks,  for  ex- 
example,  at  the  individual  mind;  and  seeing  it  become 
stationary,  the  dull  slave  of  habit,  declares  that  it 
cannot  be  immortal.  Or  it  contemplates  the  general 
community  of  men;  and  imagining  it  little  superior 
to  some  former  condition  of  the  world,  denies  it  the 
hope  of  unlimited  amelioration.  This  spirit  of  de- 
spondency is  especially  liable  to  visit  us,  when  we 
stand  at  one  of  the  pauses  of  our  time,  —  at  the  end 
of  a  season,  of  a  year,  of  a  life,  —  of  any  unit  that  has 
had  a  predecessor,  and  will  have  a  successor,  just  like 


THE    GEEA.T    YEAR    OF    PKOVIDEXCE.  239 

itself:  still  more  perhaps,  when  we  review  the  pro- 
gress (ever  small  compared  with  our  desires)  of  some 
benevolent  work,*  to  which,  from  its  magnitude  and 
character,  we  can  see  no  definite  determination.  The 
retrospect  of  a  few  years  often  seems  to  exhibit  to  us 
a  sameness  the  most  depressing;  to  show  us  how 
little  we  have  done;  to  persuade  us  that, —  as  if  in 
rebuke  of  our  hopes, — 'all  things  continue  as  they 
were,'  and  no  advent  of  a  better  life  is  heralded  as  yet. 
The  same  evils  which  met  our  eye  and  our  pity  of  old, 
encounter  us  this  day;  and  if  in  any  instances  they 
have  been  cancelled,  others,  not  less  frightful,  seem 
ever  ready  to  rush  up  into  their  place;  so  that,  in 
turning  to  the  future,  no  visible  end  appears  to  the 
saddening  task  of  Christian  mercy.  Under  the  in- 
fluence of  this  thought,  the  mind  is  haunted  and 
harassed  by  the  image  of  all  things  circulating ; 
whirling  in  mysterious  self-repetition;  looking  in 
upon  us  with  the  fixed  full  eye  of  an  ancient  fatal- 
ism. And  we  are  deluded  into  the  fear  that  nothing 
is  ever  to  be  better ;  that  our  faith  in  the  progress  of 
our  religion  and  our  kind  must  be  dragged  into  the 
vortex  of  a  wearisome  periodicity,  and  expire  in  the 
exclamation,  '  Where  is  the  promise  of  his  coming? 
for  since  the  fathers  fell  asleep,  all  things  continue  as 
they  were  from  the  beginning  of  the  creation.' 

This  distressing  impression  might  be  relieved,  if  we 
could  only  discriminate,  by  any  rule,  between  those 
series  of  events  which  are  periodical,  and  those  which 
are  eternal; — between  those  changes  in  the  moral 
world  which  visibly  complete  themselves,  and  those 

*This  Discourse  was  preached  in  behalf  of  the  London  Domestic 
Mission,  April,  1841. 


240        THE  GREAT  YEAR  OF  PKOVIDEXCE. 

which  at  least  may  be  interminable.  Change  of  some 
kind  is  the  law  of  the  universe;  everything  which 
God  does  is  progressive;  and  the  present  question  is, 
whether  any  of  his  progressions  having  reference  to 
human  beings  appear  to  run  on  into  infinitude? 

Now  in  seeking  for  an  answer  to  this  question,  we 
are  encountered  by  an  apparent  law  of  the  organized, 
or  at  all  events  of  the  sentient  creation,  of  a  truly  re- 
markable character; — a  law  which,  though  discern- 
ible only  in  fragments  and  interrupted  by  seeming 
exceptions,  holds  with  sufficient  consistency  to  dis- 
close the  general  method  of  nature;  —  viz.  that  in 
proportion  to  the  excellence  and  dignity  of  any  form 
of  existence,  is  it  long  in  coming  to  maturity ;  that 
the  cycles  of  things  are  great,  in  proportion  to  their 
worth.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  there  is  no  other 
criterion  of  the  worth  of  a  being  than  the  magnitude 
of  its  capacities,  and  the  number  of  its  functions. 

In  glancing  our  eye  upon  the  chain  of  animal 
races,  however  difficult  it  may  be  to  arrange  them 
symmetrically  in  an  ascending  series,  the  outlines  of 
this  law  are  surely  sufficiently  obvious.  The  crea- 
tures which,  by  universal  consent,  would  be  placed  at 
the  lower  end  of  the  scale,  seem  to  come  into  life 
perfect  at  once,  or  if  they  grow,  to  grow  only  in 
quantity ;  as  if  of  an  existence  so  inferior  no  part 
could  be  spared  as  preface  to  the  rest.  The  perfect 
formation  of  creatures  of  a  superior  order  divides 
itself  into  several  distinguishable  stages ;  and  the 
greater  the  number  of  faculties  and  instincts,  the 
longer  is  the  period  set  apart  for  the  process  of  de- 
velopment. The  lion  has  a  longer  infancy  than  the 
sheep,  and  the  sagacious  elephant  than  either.  The 
human  being,  lord  of  this  lower  world,  is  conducted 


THE  GREAT  TEAK  OF  PROVIDENCE.        241 

to  this  supremacy  though  a  yet  more  protracted 
ascent ;  none  of  the  creatures  that  he  rules,  have  an 
infancy  so  helpless  or  so  lasting ;  none  furnish  them- 
selves so  slowly  with  the  knowledge  needful  for  self- 
subsistence  ;  —  as  if  to  him  time  were  no  object,  and 
no  elaboration  of  growth  were  too  great  for  his 
futurity. 

Compare  also  the'  different  faculties  and  feelings  of 
the  individual  human  mind.     You  find  them  appear 
in  the  order  of  their  excellence ;  the  noblest  approach- 
ing their  maturity  the  last.    Sensation,  which  belongs 
to  man  in  common  with  all  other  sentient  beings,  is 
the  endowment  of  his  earliest  days.     Memory,  which 
simply  prevents  experience  from  perishing,  which  fur- 
nishes language  to  the  lips,  and  preserves  the  ma- 
terials of  the  past  for  future  treatment  by  the  mind, 
ripens  next.     The   understanding,  which    makes  in- 
cursions and  wins  trophies  in  the  field  of  abstract 
truth,  which  devises  measures  for  the  dimensions  of 
space  and  the  successions  of  time,  and  the  great  phys- 
ical movements  that  circulate  within  them,  is  of  later 
origin  ;  while  the  great  inventive  power  which  distin- 
guishes all  genius,  which  seems  to  sympathize  with 
the   devising    spirit   of  the    Artificer   of  things,  and 
apprehend  by  natural  affinity  the  most  subtle  rela- 
tions he  has  established,  and  anticipate  by  mysterious 
intimacy  the  future  secrets  of  nature,  and  from  old 
and  gross  ingredients  create  the  useful,  the  beautiful, 
the  true,  is  the  last  as  it  is  the  rarest  and  most  glo- 
rious of  intellectual  gifts.     And  the  moral  powers,  — 
so  far  as  they  can  be  regarded  separately  from  these, 
—  are  seen  and  felt  expanding  later  still.     The  true 
appreciation  of  action  and  character,  the  faithful  and 
impartial  love  of  whatever  things  are  pure  and  good, 
21 


242        THE  GREAT  TEAR  OP  PROVIDENCE. 

the  correct  and  profound  estimate  of  life,  the  seren- 
est  spirit  of  duty  #nd  of  faith,  are  scarcely  found  till 
most  of  the  lessons  of  our  mortal  state  have  been 
read,  and  the  soul  has  caught  some  snatches  of  inspi- 
ration from  the  '  still  sad  music  of  humanity.'  We 
may  even  say,  that  perhaps  all  our  faculties  do  not 
develop  themselves  here  ;  and  whole  classes  of  emo 
tions  and  conceptions  may  wait 'to  be  born  beneath 
other  influences.  Certain  at  least  it  is,  that  one  who 
dies  in  infancy,  can  have  little  idea  of  anything  be- 
yond sensation  ;  that  one  who  falls  in  childhood  can- 
not know  the  toils  and  triumphs  of  the  pure  reason  ; 
that  one  who  dies  in  youth  has  not  yet  learned  the 
sense  of  power  which  belongs  to  the  practised  exer- 
cise of  creative  thought,  and  the  sacred  peace  of  dis- 
interested duty  long  tried  in  trembling  and  in  tears. 
Certain  too  it  is,  that  to  the  open  mind,  fresh  gleam- 
ings  enter  to  the  last ;  strange  stirrings  of  diviner 
sympathies  ;  waves  of  thin  transparent  light  flitting 
through  the  spaces  of  the  aged  mind,  like  the  Aurora 
of  the  North  across  the  wintry  sky.  Even  when 
'  maturity '  has  been  passed,  then,  we  may  die  per- 
adventure,  ignorant  of  the  secret  fountains  of  illumi- 
nation that  may  be  sequestered  in  the  recesses  of 
our  nature  ;  and  when  we  depart  at  threescore  years 
and  ten,  our  experience  may  be  as  truly  imperfect,  — 
as  much  a  mere  fragment,  —  as  when  we  lapse  in  a 
mortality  called  falsely  '  premature.' 

From  the  individual  mind,  turn  to  the  successive 
developments  of  society  at  large ;  and  the  same  law 
is  perceptible  still ;  that  the  superior  attributes  are  of 
the  longest  growth.  The  most  rapid  of  social 
changes  is  found  in  the  progress  of  material  civili- 
zation ;  and  certainly  it  is  the  least  dignified  element 


THE  GBEA.T  YEAK  OF  PKOTIDEXCE.        243 

in  the  general  advancement,  though  essential  to  the 
rest.  Of  the  rapidity  with  which  a  new  art  may  be 
perfected,  new  channels  of  commerce  filled,  a  new 
manufacture  start  into  gigantic  existence,  no  age  or 
country  affords  more  striking  instances  than  our  own. 
Let  gain  supply  the  adequate  motive ;  and  a  few 
years  suffice  to  reclaim  the  wilderness,  and  make  the 
harvest  wave  where  before  the  forest  rose  ;  or  to  cover 
the  soil  with  cities,  busy  with  congregated  labor ;  or 
to  enliven  the  sea  with  traffic,  where  none  had  dis- 
turbed its  solitudes  before.  How  much  longer  does 
it  require  to  penetrate  the  mass  of  a  community 
with  knowledge  ;  to  fill  a  land  with  intelligence  than 
to  throng  it  with  life !  Even  in  the  long  lives  of 
nations,  few  have  arrived  at  that  season,  when  the 
demand  for  general  instruction  naturally  appears, 
and  the  truth  goes  forth,  that  the  people  are  not  a 
herd  of  mere  animals  or  instruments  of  mere  wealth, 
but  beings  of  rational  nature,  who  have  a  right  to 
their  powers  of  thought ;  and  even  where  this  de- 
mand has  arisen,  scarce  a  people  yet  have  lived  long 
enough  to  answer  it.  The  morality  of  a  community 
cannot  be  matured  till  its  intelligence  is  unfolded ; 
in  societies,  as  in  individuals,  character  cannot  set, 
till  reason  has  blossomed.  The  pure  tastes  of  virtue 
cannot  be  looked  for  in  those  who  have  never  been 
led  beyond  their  senses ;  nor  even  a  wise  self-interest 
be  expected,  where  no  habits  of  foresight  have  been 
acquired,  and  the  intellect  has  not  been  taught  to  re- 
spect the  future.  I  do  not  even  suppose  that  the 
moral  amelioration  of  a  country  immediately  follows 
on  '  the  diffusion  of  knowledge.'  On  the  spread  of 
education  it  may  ;  but  it  must  be  an  education  which 
comprises  a  principle  of  sympathy  as  well  as  of  in- 


244        THE  GEEAT  YEAH  OF  PKOVIDENCE. 

struction  ;  which  has  a  discipline  for  the  heart  as  well 
as  for  the  understanding  ;  which  remembers  the  com- 
posite structure  of  our  nature,  and  applies  knowledge 
to  no  more  than  its  proper  office  of  enlightening  the 
reason,  and  summons  up  feelings  of  right  as  the  fit 
antagonists  to  passions  that  tend  to  wrong.  But 
slower  still  than  this  is  the  religious  civilization  of  a 
country ;  so  that  the  history  of  a  religion  is  usually 
a  much  longer  and  vaster  one  than  the  history  of  any 
people ;  a  faith  embracing  many  nations,  but  no 
nation  many  faiths.  The  most  sacred  ideas  attach 
themselves  with  the  greatest  tenacity  to  the  mind  ; 
entwine  themselves  with  the  principles  of  action  and 
forms  of  the  affections  ;  and  being  most  distrustful  of 
change,  are  most  tardy  of  improvement.  The  history 
of  the  past  confirms  these  positions.  Those  coun- 
tries whose  progress  has  been  the  noblest  and  most 
durable,  have  attained  their  eminence  by  slow  and 
imperceptible  steps.  And  on  the  other  hand,  the 
oriental  tribes  that  have  rushed  into  sudden  splendor, 
have  either  stopped  with  the  material  or  at  best  the 
intellectual  form  of  greatness,  without  rising  into  the 
moral  and  spiritual ;  or  else,  their  religion,  resting  on 
no  adequate  substrata  of  the  lower  ingredients  of 
civilization,  wanted  an  element  of  stability ;  mani- 
festing the  nomadic  strength  for  conquest,  and  weak- 
ness for  repose ;  and  becoming  enervated  by  the  arts 
and  opulence  and  science  which  it  first  called  into 
existence,  and  then  could  not  command. 

Wherever  we  look,  then,  —  to  the  chain  of  animal 
existence,  to  the  faculties  of  the  individual  mind,  or. 
the  stages  of  collective  society, — we  discover  distinct 
traces  of  the  same  general  law  ;  that  in  proportion  to 
the  excellence  of  any  form   of  being,  is  its  progress 


THE  GREAT  TEAR  OF  PROVIDENCE.        245 

tardy  and  its  cycle  vast.  Contract  the  limits  of  any 
nature,  and  its  changes  become  quick  and  visible ; 
enlarge  them,  and  its  vibrations  become  slow  and 
majestic.  On  the  surface  of  a  pool,  the  wind  raises 
rapid  billows  that  would  agitate  an  insect ;  on  the 
ocean,  mighty  oscillations  that  give  a  frigate  time  to 
think.  'Like  tide  there  is  in  the  affairs  of  men;' 
and  if  we  think  nobly  of  the  great  element  on  which 
it  rides,  if  we  take  humanity  to  be  no  foul  and  shal- 
low marsh,  but  a  boundless  and  unfathomable  deep, 
we  shall  not  marvel  that  our  little  life  scarce  feels  its 
deliberate  and  solemn  sweep.  Why,  even  in  physical 
nature,  the  more  complex  and  extensive  any  system 
of  bodies  is,  the  longer  is  the  period  of  its  revolution, 
and  the  less  perceptible  its  velocity  as  a  whole.  Our 
single  earth,  revolving  round  the  sun,  soon  comes  to 
the  point  from  which  it  started  ;  add  the  moon  to  it, 
and  the  three  orbs  demand  a  greatly  increased  dura- 
tion to  return  to  the  same  relative  position ;  collect 
the  planets  into  a  group,  and  their  cycles  of  return, 
when  every  perturbation  shall  have  had  its  revolution, 
and  they  shall  look  at  each  other  as  they  did  at  first, 
becomes  immense,  and,  in  our  poor  conceptions,  al- 
most coincides  with  eternity  itself;  and  the  solar 
system,  as  a  whole,  is  travelling  on  all  the  while, 
astronomers  assure  us,  towards  the  constellation 
Hercules.  Such  are  the  natural  periods  of  the  moral 
world,  in  proportion  to  the  grandeur  of  its  parts  and 
relations;  such,  the  tendencies  of  man  and  society, 
considered  as  a  complex  whole ;  however  insensible 
the  parallax  of  their  progression,  they  doubtless  gravi- 
tate incessantly  to  some  distant  constellation  in  the 
universe  of  brilliant  possibilities  ;  to  some  space  in 
the  future  where  dwell  and  move  forms  of  power 
21* 


246         THE  GREAT  YEAR  OF  PROVIDENCE. 

and  of  good,  which  it  is  no  fable  to  believe  gigantic 
and  godlike. 

In  proportion,  then,  as  we  think  well  of  our  nature 
and  of  our  kind ;  in  proportion  as  we  estimate  wor- 
thily the  task  of  Providence  in  ripening  a  world  of 
souls,  shall  we  be  reconciled  to  the  tardy  and  inter- 
rupted steps  by  which  the  work  proceeds.  We  shall 
be  content  and  trustful,  though  our  personal  portion  ' 
of  the  work,  and  even  the  sum  of  our  combined 
endeavors  while  we  live,  should  be  inconspicuously 
small.  Have  you  resolved,  as  much  as  in  you  lies, 
to  lessen  the  number  of  those  who,  in  this  metropolis 
of  the  charities,  have  none  to  help  them,  or  lift  them 
from  the  darkness  wherein  they  exist  and  perish 
unseen?  It  is  good.  Only  remember,  that  if  the 
ministry,  which  thus  dives  into  the  recesses  of  human 
wretchedness,  and  carries  a  healing  pity  to  the  body 
and  the  soul,  which  speaks  to  tempted,  fallen,  stricken 
men  from  a  heart  that  feels  their  struggle  terrible,  yet 
believes  the  conquest  possible,  be  really  right  and 
Christian,  then  its  slowness  is  but  the  attendant  and 
symptom  of  its  worth  ;  and  to  despond  because  a 
few  years'  labor  exhibits  no  large  and  deep  impres- 
sion made  on  the  wickedness  and  miseries  of  this 
great  city,  would  be  to  slight  the  work  and  forget  its 
dignity.  When  London,  mother  of  mighty  things, 
after  the  travail  of  centuries,  brings  forth  woes,  how 
can  they  be  other  than  giant-woes,  which  no  faint 
hope,  no  puny  courage,  but  only  the  enterprise  of 
high  faith,  can  manacle  and  lay  low.  Surely  it  is 
an  unworthy  proposal  which  we  sometimes  hear 
respecting  this  and  other  deputed  ministries  of  good, 
'  Well,  it  is  a  doubtful  experiment,  but  let  us  try  it 
for  a  few  years.'  If,  indeed,  this  means  that,  in  case 


THE  GREAT  YEAR  OF  PROVIDEXCE.        247 

of  too  small  a  measure  of  success,  we  are  to  do 
something  more  and  greater ;  that  we  must  be  con- 
tent with  no  niggardly  and  unproductive  operation, 
but  recognize  in  scanty  results  a  call  to  stronger 
efforts  ;  that,  failing  a  delegated  ministry,  we  will  go 
forth  ourselves  into  the  places  of  want  and  sin,  and 
make  aggression  on  them  with  a  mercy  that  can  wait 
no  more  ;  in  this  sense,  let  the  mission  pass  for  a 
temporary  trial. 

But  if  it  be  meant,  that,  disappointed  in  our  hopes, 
we  are  to  give  it  all  up  and  do  nothing ;  that,  having 
once  set  plainly  before  our  face  the  beseeching 
looks  of  wounded  and  bleeding  humanity  stretched 
upon  our  path,  we  are  to  '  pass  by  on  the  other  side,' 
thinking  it  enough  to  have  '  come  and  seen  where  it 
was,'  —  then  I  must  say  that  any  work,  undertaken 
in  this  spirit,  has  failed  already.  For  my  own  part, 
I  should  say  that  were  we  even  to  make  no  visible 
progress,  were  we  able  to  beat  back  the  ills  with 
which  we  contend  by  not  one  hair's  breadth;  nay, 
were  they  to  be  seen  actually  advancing  on  us,  still 
no  retreat,  but  only  the  more  strenuous  aggression, 
would  be  admissible.  For  what  purpose  can  any 
Christian  say  that  he  is  here  in  life,  with  his  divine 
intimation  of  what  ought  to  be,  and  his  sorrowing 
perception  of  what  is,  if  not  to  put  forth  a  perpetual 
endeavor  against  the  downward  gravitation  of  his 
own  and  others'  nature  ?  And  if  in  the  conquest  of 
evil,  God  can  engage  himself  eternally,  is  it  not  a 
small  thing  for  us  to  yield  up  to  the  struggle  our 
threescore  years  and  ten  ?  Whatever  difficulties  may 
baffle  us,  whatever  defeat  await  us,  it  is  our  business 
to  live  with  resistance  in  our  will,  and  die  with  pro- 
test on  our  lips,  and  make  our  whole  existence,  not 


248        THE  GREAT  YEAR  OF  PROVIDENCE. 

only  in  desire  and  prayer,  but  in  resolve,  in  speech, 
in  act,  a  remonstrance  against  whatever  hurts  and 
destroys  in  all  the  earth.  Did  we  give  heed  to 
the  counsels  of  passiveness  and  despondency,  our 
Christendom,  faithless  to  the  trust  consigned  to  it 
by  Heaven,  must  perish  by  the  forces  to  which  it 
has  succumbed.  For,  between  the  Christian  faith, 
teaching  the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  Immortality 
of  men,  —  between  this  and  the  degradation  of  large 
portions  of  the  human  family,  —  there  is  an  irrecon- 
cilable variance,  an  internecine  war,  to  be  interrupted 
by  no  parley,  and  mitigated  by  no  quarter;  and  if 
faith  gives  up  its  aggression  upon  the  evil,  the  evil 
must  destroy  the  faith.  If  the  world  were  all  a 
slave-market  or  a  gin-palace,  what  possible  place 
could  such  a  thing  as  the  Christian  religion  find 
therein  ?  Who,  amid  a  carnival  of  sin,  could  believe 
in  any  deathless  sanctity  ?  or,  through  the  steams  of 
a  besotted  earth,  discern  the  pure  light  of  an  over- 
arching heaven  ?  or,  through  the  moans  and  dumb 
anguish  of  a  race,  send  up  a  hymn  of  praise  to  the 
All-merciful  ?  And  are  there  not  thousands  already, 
so  environed  and  shut  in,  that  their  world  is  little 
else  than  this  ?  In  proportion  as  this  number  is  per- 
mitted to  increase,  does  Christianity  lose  its  evidence, 
and  become  impossible.  Sensualism  and  sin  can- 
not abide  the  clear  angelic  look  of  Christian  faith  ; 
but  if  once  that  serene  eye  becomes  confused  and 
droops  abashed,  the  foe  starts  up  in  demoniac  tri- 
umph, and  proclaims  man  to  be  a  brute,  and  earth  a 
grave. 

As  we  love,  then,  the  religion  by  which  we  live, 
let  us  give  no  heed  to  doubt  and  fear.  In  the  spirit 
of  hope  and  firm  endeavor,  let  us  go  forward  with 


THE  GREAT  YEAR  OF  PROVIDENCE.        249 

the  work  we  have  begun  ;  undismayed  by  difficulties 
which  God  permits  us  to  hold  in  check,  but  not  to 
vanquish ;  and  stipulating  for  no  rewards  of  large 
success  as  the  conditions  of  our  constancy  of  service. 
Our  reliance  for  good  results,  and  our  consolation 
under  their  postponement,  is  in  the  essentially  re- 
ligious elements  of  this  ministry;  were  its  methods 
purely  economic,  addressing  themselves  exclusively 
to  the  bodily  wants  of  its  objects ;  or  intellectual, 
working  at  their  self-interest  and  self-will,  —  I,  for 
one,  should  despair  of  any  return  worthy  of  much 
patience.  But  going  forth  as  we  do  with  that  divine 
and  penetrative  religion,  to  whose  subduing  energy 
so  many  centuries  and  nations  have  borne  their  testi- 
mony, and  continuing  only  that  evangelizing  process, 
before  which  so  much  wretchedness  and  guilt  have 
already  yielded,  we  take  our  appointed  place  in  the 
long  history  of  Christianity,  and  attempt  a  work  for 
which,  like  Providence,  we  can  afford  to  wait.  It  is 
human,  indeed,  to  desire  some  rich  success;  and 
each  generation  expects  to  gather  and  taste  the  pro- 
duce of  its  own  toil ;  but  the  seasons  of  God  are 
eternal ;  he  <  giveth  the  increase,'  not  for  enjoyment 
only,  but  for  reproduction ;  and  ripens  secretly,  be- 
neath the  thick  foliage  of  events,  many  a  fruit  of 
our  moral  tillage,  for  the  sake  of  the  little  unnoticed 
seed,  which,  dropped  on  the  soil  of  his  Providence, 
shall  spread  over  a  future  age  the  shelter  of  some  tree 
of  life.  Be  it  ours  in  word  to  proclaim,  in  deed  to 
make  ready,  the  '  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord.' 


XX. 

CHRIST    AND    THE    LITTLE    CHILD. 
LUKE  xviir.  17. 

VERILY  I  SAT  UNTO  YOU,  WHOSOEVER  SHALL  NOT  RECEIVE  THE 
KINGDOM  OF  GOD  AS  A  LITTLE  CHILD,  SHALL  IN  NO  WISE  ENTER 
THEREIN. 

BY  the  kingdom  of  God  was  meant  neither  the 
future  state  of  the  righteous,  nor  the  dominion  of 
Christianity  in  the  world;  but  the  personal  reign  of 
Messiah  over  a  favored  and  faithful  people,  on  a 
renovated  earth.  The  prospect  of  this  period  was, 
however,  to  the  people  of  Palestine,  nearly  what  the 
hope  of  heaven  is  to  the  Christian:  —  it  embodied  all 
their  ideas  of  divine  privilege  and  happiness,  and, 
coinciding  with  their  conception  of  religious  exist- 
ence, became  their  great  symbol,  by  which  to  express 
the  most  blessed  system  of  relations  between  the  hu- 
man mind  and  God.  Into  this  system  they  esteemed 
it  their  birth-right  to  enter ;  the  title  and  prerogative 
were  in  their  blood,  —  the  blood  of  patriarchs  whom 
they  had  ceased  to  resemble,  and  of  prophets  of 
whose  spirit  they  had  none.  At  the  gate  of  the  king- 
dom they  looked  with  no  meek  and  far-off  desire ;  they 
knelt  and  knocked  with  no  suppliant  air,  breathing 
such  confessions  of  unworthiness  as  give  security  for 
gratitude ;  but  turned  on  it  the  greedy  eye  of  property, 


CHRIST    AND    THE    XITTLE    CHILD.  251 

and  rushed  to  it  with  intent  to  '  do  what  they  liked 
with  their  own,'  —  so  that  'the  kingdom  of  heaven 
suffered  violence,  and  the  violent  would  take  it  by 
force.'  Scarcely  were  they  content  with  the  notion  of 
admission  as  its  subjects;  they  must  be  its  lords  and 
administrators  too.  For  them,  thought  the  Pharisees, 
were  its  dignities  and  splendors  created,  for  them  its 
patronage  reserved ;  and  the  glorious  sovereignty  of 
God  was  to  be,  not  over  them,  but  by  them ;  so  that, 
in  every  proffer  of  their  services  to  Him, 'they  con- 
templated, not  the  humility  of  submission,  but  the 
pride  of  command.  Before  such  it  was  that  Jesus 
held  in  his  arms  a  child,  gazing  on  his  face,  no  doubt, 
in  wonder,  not  without  a  pleased  look  of  trust,  and 
said,  '  Whosoever  shall  not  receive  the  kingdom  of 
God  as  a  little  child,  shall  in  no  wise  enter  therein.' 
The  occasion  was  slight  and  transient;  the  senti- 
ment is  profound  and  universal.  In  no  other  way 
could  our  Lord  have  made  the  irreligion  of  the  Phari- 
sees' temper  more  obvious,  because  nowhere  could 
he  have  found  a  more  genuine  emblem  of  the  pure 
religious  spirit  than  in  a  child.  Not,  as  will  hereafter 
appear,  because  a  child's  heart  is  peculiarly  devo- 
tional; nor  because  the  moral  qualities  of  early  life 
possess  the  romantic  purity  and  perfection  sometimes 
ascribed  to  them ;  much  less,  because  maturity  affords 
a  less  fitting  scope  for  the  exercise  of  the  holy  mind ; 
but,  because  the  relations  of  infancy  resemble  the 
religious  relations ;  the  natural  conditions  of  its  exist- 
ence are  the  same  that  are  felt  by  the  devout  heart ; 
and  hence  without  any  singularity  of  merit,  the  spirit 
of  childhood,  acquired  by  simple  accommodations  to 
the  laws  of  its  being,  is  a  just  representative  of  the 
temper  which  devotion  imparts  to  the  mature.  Let 


252  CHRIST    AND    THE     LITTLE     CHILD. 

us  trace  some  of  the  analogies  between  the  spirit  of 
childhood  and  the  spirit  of  religion. 

Religion,  it  is  obvious,  can  have  place  only  in 
created  and  dependent  minds.  God  cannot  be  de- 
vout ;  and  though  we  have  a  term,  viz.  ^.holyf  appli- 
cable, as  an  epithet  of  moral  description,  to  him  in 
common  with  good  men,  the  word,  singularly  enough, 
expresses,  in  reference  to  the  human  mind,  precisely 
the  only  quality  which  cannot  possibly  attach  to  the 
Divine;  —  'a  holy  man"1  meaning  one  whose  excel- 
lence has  a  religious  root;  —  'a  holy  God'  denoting 
the  only  being  in  the  spiritual  universe,  whose  per- 
fections are  unsusceptible  of  the  colors  of  religious 
emotion.  He  who  has  no  higher  than  himself  must 
be  stranger  to  the  unspeakable  reverence  that  gazes 
upwards  on  a  goodness  not  its  own;  he  who  is  him- 
self the  measure  of  all  that  is  divine  is  unconscious  of 
the  presence  of  a  yet  diviner ;  and  though  we  cannot 
speak  of  his  moral  attributes,  without  implying  that 
he  respects  and  loves  the  right,  yet  his  venerating 
regards  must  look  for  this  great  idea,  not  forth,  as  on 
some  outward  being  who  furnish  the  conception,  but 
ivithin,  where  alone  is  the  Infinitude  that  befits  the 
Infinite. 

Yet  it  is  not  strictly  Deity  alone  whose  nature 
may  exclude  the  possibilities  of  religion.  This  peculi- 
arity may  arise,  without  our  seeking  it  at  that  supreme 
height.  A  mind,  possessed  not  of  literal  Omniscience, 
but  of  power  simply  equal  to  its  conceptions,  a  mind 
absolute  within  its  own  realm,  and  limited  only  by 
its  desires,  would  be  incapable  of  veneration,  because 
unconscious  of  a  superior;  and  though  he  might 
really  live  in  a  narrow  ring  environed  by  the  im- 
measurable deep  of  things,  —  so  long  as  he  mistook 


CHKISI    AND    THE    LITTLE    CHILD.  253 

its  circle  for  the  total  universe,  he  would  feel,  not  as 
dependent,  but  as  God,  —  Lord  of  his  little  island 
in  the  sea  of  things,  and  ignorant  of  all  beyond.  Not 
till  we  are  embraced  by  some  necessity,  and  see  its 
limits  closing  us  in,  can  the  opportunity  and  spirit  of 
religion  begin.  So  long  as  self-will  is  the  sole  law, 
and  sits  upon  its  throne,  surrounded  by  obedient  ser- 
vitors, and  in  unresisted  practice  of  command,  the 
relations  from  which  piety  springs  do  not  subsist. 
The  exercise  of  power  will  not  induce  the  idea  of 
obligation,  or  the  temper  of  submission.  It  is  when 
we  are  struck  down  by  some  blow  that  extorts  the 
cry  of  dependence,  when  we  feel  the  pressure  of 
foreign  forces  like  a  weight  of  darkness  on  us,  when 
within  us  moves  the  strife  that  ends  sometimes  in  the 
triumph  of  success,  sometimes  in  the  collapse  of 
weakness,  that  the  heart  acknowledges  a  relation  to 
that  which  is  above,  as  well  as  that  which  is  beneath. 
And  even  then,  though  submission  is  clearly  inevit- 
able, not  so  are  the  sentiments  of  religion ;  for  there  is 
still  a  question,  submit  with  hate,  or  submit  with  love  ? 
And  it  is  the  blessed  peculiarity  of  devotion,  that  it 
abdicates  self-will,  not  sullenly  but  with  joy,  has  no 
enmity  to  the  power  that  restrains  it,  but  a  reverence 
deep  and  tender,  so  that  to  feel  the  controlling  pre- 
sence becomes  the  prime  condition  of  its  peace,  and  to 
be  stricken  of  God  and  afflicted  is  better  than  to  be 
left  to  itself,  and  be  at  peace.  '  Let  me  alone,  and 
torment  me  not,'  is  the  cry  of  discontent ;  '  break  me 
in  sorrow,  but  depart  not  from  me,'  is  the  prayer  of 
piety.  Such  a  suppliant  has  found  the  force  of 
compulsion  turned  into  the  law  of  duty ;  and  invert- 
ing its  direction,  instead  of  crushing  to  the  earth,  it 
lifts  him  to  the  skies.  If  once  he  said  with  deep 
22 


254  CHRIST    AND    THE    LITTLE    CHILD. 

reluctance,  'I must,  therefore  T  will,'  he  has  now  fused 
a  divine  element  into  that  better  word,  and  finds  it 
a  glad  thing  to  say,  1 1  ought,  therefore  I  will.'  Ought 
is  the  heavenly  reading  for  'must?  From  the  iron 
sceptre  of  necessity  he  has  forged  a  weapon  of 
ethereal  temper;  wherewith  may  be  won  victories 
more  sublime  than  all  the  achievements  of  physical 
omnipotence. 

Self-will  then,  so  far  as  it  operates,  excludes  the 
sentiments  of  religion ;  while  it  is  of  their  very  essence 
to  live  reverently  and  happily  under  a  law  not  always 
coinciding  with  self-will.  It  is  this  which  presents 
us  with  the  first  analogy  between  the  spirit  of  child- 
hood and  the  spirit  of  religion. 

What,  indeed,  can  be  a  truer  picture  of  man  in 
creation,  than  the  position  of  a  child  in  its  own  home? 
How  silently,  yet  how  surely,  does  the  domestic  rule 
control  him,  dating  his  rising  and  his  rest,  his  going 
out  and  coming  in,  apportioning  his  duties  and 
his  mirth,  ordering  secretly  the  very  current  of  his 
thoughts,  whether  it  sparkle  with  gladness,  or  over- 
flow with  tears !  Yet  how  rarely  has  he  any  painful 
sense  of  the  constraining  force  which  is  every  moment 
on  him !  Hemmed  in  on  every  side  by  a  power  more 
vigilant  than  the  most  jealous  despotism,  yet  look  at 
his  open  brow,  and  say,  whether  creature  ever  was 
more  free?  And  why?  Not  certainly  because  child- 
ish minds  are  destitute  of  self-will  that  would  seduce 
them  into  transgression ;  but  because  where  reverence 
and  love  make  melody  in  the  heart,  the  temper  is 
charmed  and  sleeps.  Light,  therefore,  as  the  weight 
of  the  circumambient  atmosphere  upon  the  body,  is 
the  pressure  of  home  duty  upon  the  child ;  easy  by 
the  constancy  and  completeness  with  which  it  shuts 


CHRIST    AND    THE    LITTLE    CHILD.  255 

him  in ;  inseparable  from  the  vital  elements  of  his 
being.  His  life  is  an  exchange  of  obedience  for  pro- 
tection ;  he  gives  submission,  and  is  sheltered.  Fold- 
ed in  the  arms  of  an  unspeakable  affection,  he  is 
screened  from  the  anxieties  of  self-care.  Not  yet  is 
he  left  alone  upon  the  infinite  plain  of  existence,  to 
choose  a  path  by  the  dim,  sad  lustre  of  his  own  wis- 
dom, but  is  led  gently  on  by  the  unextinguished  lamp 
of  a  father's  experience,  and  the  meek  starlight  of  a 
mother's  love.  In  strangeness  and  danger,  how  close 
he  keeps  to  the  hand  that  leads  him!  In  doubt,  how 
he  looks  up  to  interpret  the  eye  that  speaks  to  him ! 
In  loss  and  loneliness,  with  what  cries  and  tears  he 
sits  down  to  lament  his  freedom !  He  asks,  but 
claims  nothing;  his  momentary  forwardness  stilled 
perhaps  by  a  mere  word ;  and,  if  not,  yet  his  spon- 
taneous return  after  an  interval,  to  his  accustomed 
ways,  confesses  that  in  the  order  of  obedience  is 
the  truest  liberty. 

In  a  like  free  and  natural  movement  within  the 
limits  of  a  higher  law,  in  like  obedience  refreshing 
because  reverential,  in  like  consciousness  of  a  wiser 
and  holier  presence,  from  whom  we  withhold  nothing, 
not  even  ourselves,  consists  the  spirit  of  true  piety ; 
nor  can  any  dwell  on  earth  or  in  heaven,  finding  it  a 
kingdom  of  God,  but  as  the  loving  child  dwelleth 
within  his  home.  Unhappily,  this  temper  is  apt  to 
be  worn  away  by  the  hard  attrition  of  maturer  life. 
Our  human  relations  are  then  reversed ;  we  succeed, 
in  natural  course,  to  habits  of  command:  the  pride  of 
power  spoils  us;  the  mental  attitudes  of  reverence 
become  uneasy ;  the  eye  bent  unceasingly  down  on 
the  petty  realm  of  which  we  are  lords,  omits  to  look 
up  on  the  infinite  empire  of  which  we  are  subjects. 


256  CHEISI    AXD    THE    LITTLE    CHILD. 

And  thus  might  we  become  shut  up  in  the  dry  crust 
of  our  self-will,  if  no  embassage  of  suffering  descend- 
ed, and  loosed  the  fountain  of  grief.  Then  the  spirit 
of  early  years  return  upon  good  hearts,  and  they  be- 
come ashamed,  not  of  their  new  submission  to  the 
Great  Parent,  but  of  their  long  estrangement  from 
his  abode.  A  piety,  like  that  of  Christ,  thus  brings 
together  the  characteristic  affections  of  different  peri- 
ods of  life,  and  keeps  fresh  the  beauty  of  them  all ;  it 
puts  us  back  to  whatever  is  blessed  in  childhood, 
without  abating  one  glory  of  our  manhood;  upon  the 
embers  of  age,  it  kindles  once  more  the  early  fires  of 
life,  to  send  their  genial  glow  through  the  evening 
chamber  of  the  soul,  and  shine  with  playful  and  mel- 
lowed light  through  its  darkened  windows,  —  bright- 
est sign  of  a  cheerful  home  to  the  passer  by  in  storm 
and  rain.  By  this  restoration,  let  me  repeat  it,  the 
religious  mind  loses  no  one  glory  of  its  manhood  ;  it 
is  not  a  substitution  of  passive  meekness  for  active 
energy,  of  a  devout  effeminacy  for  natural  vigor.  For 
while  the  habit  of  successful  rule,  taking  the  lead,  is 
apt  to  disqualify  for  submission,  and  render  the  mind 
restive  under  necessity,  there  is  nothing  in  a  deep 
reverence  of  soul  which  encroaches  on  the  capacities 
for  command.  "What  was  it  that  armed  the  Maid  of 
Orleans  for  field  and  siege,  and  enabled  her  to  erect 
again  the  prostrate  courage  of  a  nation?  What  was 
it  that  endowed  a  Washington  with  a  power,  in  arms 
and  peace,  which  no  veterans  could  break,  nor  any 
rival  supplant?  It  was  this;  that  with  them  the  ex- 
ercise of  command  was  itself  the  practice  of  obedi- 
ence ;  —  obedience  to  a  high  faith  within  the  heart,  — 
to  a  venerated  idea  of  duty  and  of  God ;  and  authority, 
thus  deprived  of  its  imperiousness  and  its  caprice, 


CHKIST    AXD    THE    LITTLE    CHILD.  257 

thus  moderated  to  an  inflexible  justice,  and  worn  with 
a  divine  simplicity,  strikes  into  human  observers  an 
awe,  a  delight,  a  trust,  which  are  themselves  the  high- 
est fruits  of  power.  When  men  perceive  that  their 
very  rulers  are  susceptible  of  obedience,  and  are  fol- 
lowing the  guidance  of  reverential  thoughts,  it  estab- 
lishes a  point  of  sympathy,  and  softens  the  hardships 
of  submission.  What  parent  knows  not  that  then 
only  are  his  orders  listened  to  as  oracles,  when  they 
are  sent  forth,  not  with  the  harsh  clangor  of  self-will, 
but  in  the  quiet  tones  that  issue  from  behind  the 
shrine  of  duty  ? 

In  the  construction  which  I  have  given  to  the  sen- 
timent of  Christ,  it  is  not  necessary  to  assume  that 
the  infant  mind  is  peculiarly  susceptible  of  religious 
impressions  ;  or  that  because  it  is  taken  as  the  em- 
blem of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  it  must  on  that  ac- 
count be  laboriously  and  prematurely  crowded  with 
theological  ideas  ;  the  issue  of  which  would  be  an 
artificial  assumption  of  states  of  sentiment,  and  an 
affectation  of  desires,  wholly  unnatural  and  unreal, 
and  absolutely  incapable  as  yet,  of  any  deep  root 
of  sincerity.  Except  in  circumstances  of  sickness  or 
grief,  which  prematurely  ripen  the  mind,  and  make 
its  wants  anticipate  its  years,  childhood  has  little 
need  of  a  religion,  in  our  sense  of  the  word  ;  for  God 
has  given  it,  in  its  very  lot,  a  religion  of  its  own,  the 
sufficiency  of  which  it  were  impiety  to  doubt.  The 
child's  veneration  can  scarcely  climb  to  any  loftier 
height,  than  the  soul  of  a  wise  and  good  parent ;  — 
well  even,  if  he  can  distantly,  and  with  a  wistful  con- 
templation, scan  even  that.  How  can  there  be  for 
him  diviner  truth  than  his  father's  knowledge,  a  more 
wondrous  world  than  his  fathers  experience,  a  better 

•2-2* 


258  CHEIST    AND    THE    LITTLE    CHILD. 

Providence  than  his  mother's  vigilance,  a  securer 
fidelity  than  in  their  united  promise  ?  Encompassed 
round  by  these,  he  rests  as  in  the  embrace  of  the  only 
omniscience  he  can  comprehend.  Nor  let  this  domes- 
tic faith  suffer  disturbance  before  its  time.  It  is 
enough  if  he  but  sees  the  parents  bend  with  silent 
awe,  or  hears  them  speak  as  if  they  were  children  too, 
before  a  holier  still ;  this  will  carry  on  the  ideal  gra- 
dation of  reverence,  and  show  the  filmy  deep  where 
the  steps  ascend  the  skies.  And  then,  when  the  time 
of  free-will  is  come,  and  youth  is  cast  forth  from  its 
protection  into  the  bewildering  forces,  now  fierce  and 
now  seductive,  of  mid-life,  religion  comes  in,  as  the 
just  and  natural  successor  to  domestic  influences ; 
shaping  forth,  for  the  heart's  shelter  in  the  wild  im- 
mensity, the  walls  of  an  adamantine  Providence,  and 
spreading  over  the  uncovered  head  the  dome  of  im- 
mortality. O  it  is  thus  only  that  we  mortals,  in  our 
maturity  of  energy  and  passion,  can  dwell  on  earth 
in  purity  and  peace.  By  a  polity  of  self-interest,  and 
adjustments  of  promotion,  and  agencies  of  fear,  we 
might,  no  doubt,  have  the  world  governed  as  a 
camp  or  a  prison ;  but  by  faith  alone  can  we  dwell 
in  it  as  a  home,  and  nestle  domestically  in  our  allot- 
ted portion  of  space  and  time.  Taught  by  Christ,  we 
glance  at  the  visible  creation,  once  so  awful,  so  full  of 
forces  rushing  we  know  not  whither,  and  involving 
us  in  their  indomitable  speed,  —  and  it  becomes  the 
mansion  of  God's  house,  peaceful  as  a  father's  abode  ; 
the  sun  that  warms  us  is  our  domestic  hearth ;  and 
the  blue  canopy  roofs  us  in  with  unspeakable  protec- 
tion. And  as  for  life  and  its  struggles,  its  stormiest 
conflicts  are  but  the  mimic  battles,  whereby  the  spirit- 
ual athlete  trains  himself  for  a  higher  theatre ;  and  if 


CHRIST    AND    THE    LITTLE    CHILD.  259 

perchance  among  the  restless  multitude  that  hurry 
over  the  scene,  a  neighbor  should  fall,  shall  I  not  help 
him,  though  it  be  his  own  demon  passion  that  rends 
him  ?  O  child  of  my  Father,  wounded,  bleeding,  and 
worn  by  inward  woes,  turn  not  thy  face  away  ;  let 
me  lift  thee  from  thy  bed  of  rock,  and  stretch  thee  on 
the  green  sod  of  a  pure  affection  ;  for  am  I  not  thy 
brother,  stricken  in  thy  stripes,  and  healed  in  thy 
rest? 

This  restoration  to  us  of  the  filial  feelings  is  the 
main  illustrative  point  in  our  Lord's  analogy  between 
the  spirit  of  piety  and  that  of  infancy.  But  there  are 
other  characteristics  of  childhood,  which  religion 
renders  back  to  us,  freshened  and  ennobled.  To  the 
child,  the  time  before  him  seems  to  have  no  end.  It 
is  long  before  he  essays  to  measure  it  all ;  and  when 
he  does,  it  is  only  to  prove  it  immeasurable.  The 
next  year  is  as  a  gigantic  bridge  that  joins  the  two 
eternities;  and  as  for  ah1  beyond,  it  is  a  land  bound- 
less, safe;  verdant  as  the  spring  meadow,  and  flooded 
over  with  gladdest  sunshine.  The  open  graves  lie  hid 
among  the  grass ;  and  the  horizon  shows  not  the  little 
cloud,  that  shall  bring  up  the  overcasting  of  the  heav- 
ens. Let  a  few  years  pass,  and  how  does  the  vast 
field  contract  itself,  and  the  stability  of  things  seem 
shaken !  The  merry  playmates,  whose  laugh  still 
rings  in  our  memory,  by  what  storms  have  they  been 
shattered ;  and  now  wander,  dispersed,  like  a  ship- 
wrecked crew,  whose  faithful  hearts  could  keep 
together  no  longer,  against  necessities  so  sharp.  Be- 
fore the  middle  of  our  natural  career  the  wastes 
of  vicissitude  become  deplorable ;  nor  could  any 
thoughtful  man,  if  abandoned  to  physical  impres- 
sions, feel  the  great  mountain  of  life  crumbling  away 


260  CHRIST    AND    THE    LITTLE    CHILD. 

beneath  him,  and  see  portion  after  portion  dropping 
into  the  abyss  on  which  it  seems  built,  till  but  a  film 
separates  him  too  from  the  gulf,  without  the  chill  of 
an  awe  most  sad.  But  this  impression  of  a  mourn- 
ful brevity  in  our  existence  the  spirit  of  our  faith  cor- 
rects. To  the  life,  which  had  begun  to  appear  like  a 
process  of  continual  loss,  it  adds  another  which  is  an 
everlasting  gain  ;  and  we  look  again  upon  the  future 
with  eyes  of  childlike  joy,  seeing  that,  as  our  infant 
hearts  had  said,  it  hath  no  end,  nor  any  grief  that 
can  endure.  From  the  cypress  tree  beneath  whose 
shadow  we  had  placed  ourselves  to  weep,  we  pass 
on  with  lightened  step  into  the  paradise  of  God, 
where  is  a  rustling  as  of  whispers  of  divinest  peace, 
and  hills,  truly  called  eternal,  close  us  round. 

O  blest  beyond  expression  are  they  who,  by  this 
spirit  of  Christ,  call  back  the  freshness  of  their  early 
years,  and  shed  it  over  the  wisdom  of  maturity  ;  who, 
by  attaching  the  great  and  transforming  idea  of  God 
to  everything,  deprive  the  humblest  exisetence  of  its 
monotony;  who  hear  in  the  speech,  and  behold  in 
the  incidents,  of  every  day,  somewhat  that  is  sacred  ! 
For  them  life  has  no  satiety,  disappointment  no  sting. 
They  bear  within  them  a  penetrative  power,  which 
pierces  beneath  the  earthy  surface  of  things,  and 
detects  a  meaning  that  is  heavenly ;  enriching  com- 
mon sentiment  with  profound  truth ;  lifting  common 
duties  from  the  conventional  and  the  respectable 
into  the  holy  and  divine  ;  and  amid  trials  of  the  hour, 
giving  dignity  to  that  which  else  were  humiliating 
and  mean. 


XXL 

THE    CHRISTIANITY    OF    OLD    AGE. 

PHILEMON  9. 

FOIl  LOVE'S  SAKE  I  RATHER   BESEECH   THEE,  BEING  SUCH  A  ONE  AS 
PAUL  THE  AGED. 

THE  reverence  for  age  is  a  striking  and  refreshing 
feature  in  the  civilization  of  ancient  and  Pagan 
times.  The  frequent  traces  of  it  in  the  literature  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  compared  with  the  silence  of 
Christian  precept  on  the  subject,  might  be  thought 
to  indicate  that  this  sentiment  owes  no  obligation  to 
Christianity,  and  has  a  better  home  in  the  human- 
ities of  nature,  than  in  the  suggestions  of  faith.  The 
conclusion,  however,  would  be  wholly  unwarrantable  ; 
and  would  never  occur,  except  to  those  who  do  not 
look  beyond  the  letter  into  the  spirit  of  a  system,  and 
who  think  to  understand  a  religion  by  arithmetical 
reckoning  of  its  maxims.  Every  system  naturally 
strengthens  most  its  weakest  points.  That  Cicero 
wrote  a  treatise  upon  Age,  and  expended  on  it  all  the 
ingenuity  of  his  philosophy,  and  the  graces  of  his 
dialogue,  proves  that  he  regarded  this  department  of 
morality  with  anxiety  and  apprehension ;  nor  would 
Christianity  have  left  the  topic  untouched,  if  its  spirit 
and  faith  had  not  lifted  this  class  of  duties  beyond 
the  danger  of  neglect.  A  decline  of  tenderness  tow- 


262  THE    CHRISTIANITY    OF    OLD    AGE. 

ards  the  aged, — mean  or  even  melancholy  sentiments 
with  respect  to  their  infirmities,  can  never  arise  with- 
out scepticism  of  human  immortality,  and  a  total 
defection  from  the  Christian  mind. 

The  dignity  of  age  in  the  ancient  world,  was  sus- 
tained by  many  considerations,  of  mingled  expediency 
and  affection,  which  retain  with  us  but  little  force. 
Of  how  many  honors  has  the  printing-press  alone 
deprived  the  hoary  head!  It  has  driven  out  the  era, 
so  genial  to  the  old,  of  spoken  wisdom,  and  threatens 
a  reign  of  silence,  by  putting  all  knowledge  and  ex- 
perience into  type.  The  patriarch  of  a  community 
can  never  be  restored  to  the  kind  of  importance  which 
he  possessed  in  the  elder  societies  of  the  world.  He 
was  his  neighbor's  chronicler ;  bearing  within  him 
the  only  extant  image  of  many  departed  scenes  and 
memorable  deeds,  and  able  to  link  the  dim  traditions 
of  the  past  with  the  living  incidents  of  the  present. 
He  was  their  most  qualified  counsellor ;  his  memory 
serving  as  the  archives  of  the  state,  and  supplying 
many  a  passage  of  history  illustrative  of  existing 
emergencies,  and  solving  some  civic  perplexity.  He 
was  their  poet;  representative  of  an  age  already 
passed  from  the  actual  into  the  ideal ;  associate  or 
contemporary  of  men  whose  names  have  become  ven- 
erable ;  and  in  the  oft-repeated  tale  of  other  days, 
from  which  time  has  expelled  whatever  was  prosaic, 
weaving  the  retrospect  of  life  into  an  Epic.  He  was 
their  priest;  loving  to  nurture  wonder  and  spread  the 
sense  of  mystery,  by  recounting  the  authentic  prodi- 
gies of  his  or  his  father's  years,  when  omen  and 
prophecy  were  no  dubious  things,  but  sober  verities 
which  Providence  had  not  yet  begrudged  the  still 
pious  earth.  From  all  these  prerogatives  he  is  now 


THE    CHRISTIANITY    OF    OLD   AGE.  263 

deposed,  supplanted  in  his  authority  by  the  journal 
and  the  library  ;  whose  speechless  and  impersonal  lore 
coldly,  but  effectually,  supplies  the  wants  once  served 
by  the  living  voice  of  elders  kindling  with  the  inspi- 
ration of  the  past. 

By  far  other  and  higher  considerations  does  Chris- 
tianity sustain  reverential  sentiments  towards  age. 
In  the  shape  which  they  formerly  assumed,  they  were 
the  effects  and  marks  of  an  imperfect  intellectual 
civilization  ;  surviving  now,  they  are  a  part  of  the 
devout  humanities,  diffused  by  the  spirit  of  Christ. 
But  for  that  spirit,  every  change  which  made  the  old 
less  useful,  would  have  made  them  less  revered.  But 
the  merely  social  and  utilitarian  estimate  of  human 
beings  can  never  become  prevalent,  so  long  as  faith 
in  the  immortal  soul  is  genuine  and  sincere,  and 
Jesus  is  permitted  to  teach  in  his  own  way  the  honor 
that  is  due  to  all  men.  To  him  did  God  give  it  to 
be  the  great  foe  of  all  scorn  and  negligence  of  heart ; 
nor  are  there  any  tenants  of  life  on  whose  lot  he  has 
shed  a  greater  sanctity,  than  on  those  who  are  visibly 
on  the  verge  of  their  departure.  Let  us  observe  for  a 
few  moments,  how  Christianity  teaches  the  world  to 
look  upon  the  aged. 

Not,  certainly,  as  its  worn-out  tools,  who  have  done 
their  work,  and  are  fit  only  to  be  flung  aside  to  rust  as 
worthless  things.  Not  with  sordid  discontent,  as  on 
unwelcome  and  tedious  guests,  that  they  linger  still 
to  consume  a  hospitality  which  they  will  never  repay, 
and  keep  possession  of  sources  of  enjoyment,  on 
which  more  vivid  appetites  are  impatient  to  enter. 
For  wherever  the  slightest  vestige  of  such  feelings 
exists,  there  can  be  no  remembrance  of  that  higher 
field  of  service,  of  that  nobler  and  more  finished  work, 


264  THE    CHRISTIANITY    OF    OLD    AGE. 

for  which  time,  to  its  last  beat,  continues  to  prepare. 
So  Epicurean  a  thought  dwells  in  the  crust  of  selfish- 
ness and  sense,  and  has  never  felt  the  pure  breath  of 
faith  and  reverence.  Is  there  nothing  which  can 
drive  us  from  this  infatuation,  and  persuade  us  to 
look  at  a  human  being,  not  for  what  he  has,  but 
for  what  he  is  ?  Is  he  nothing  then  but  a  pensioner 
of  Mammon,  whose  pittance  is  a  pleasant  sight  for 
greedy  eyes  ?  Can  we  see  him  decline  step  by  step 
to  the  brink  of  the  dark  abyss,  till  the  ground  crum- 
bles beneath  him  and  he  slips  in,  and  yet  spend  all 
our  anxiety  on  the  dropped  cloak  he  has  left  behind  ? 

Nor  are  the  mere  feelings  of  instinctive  compas- 
sion towards  weakness  and  selfishness  those  with 
which  Christianity  encourages  us  to  look  on  age. 
For  these  contemplate  only  its  physical  attributes ; 
they  virtually  deny  or  overlook  all  its  claims,  except 
those  of  its  animal  infirmities ;  and  show  a  mind  for- 
getful of  the  capacities  within,  latent  perhaps,  but  yet 
imperishable,  that  have  toiled  in  a  great  work,  and 
are  on  the  threshold  of  a  greater ;  that  can  know  no 
eclipse  but  that  of  shame,  nor  any  decrepitude  but 
that  of  sin. 

It  has  been  imagined  that  religious  faith  does  not 
like  to  draw  attention  to  the  decline  which  precedes, 
often  by  years,  the  approach  of  death  ;  that  the  spec- 
tacle of  a  human  being  in  ruins  terrifies  the  expecta- 
tion of  futurity,  and  humbles  the  mind  with  mean 
suspicions  of  its  destiny.  Scepticism,  which  delights 
in  all  the  ill-bodings  which  can  be  drawn  from  evil 
and  decay,  takes  us  to  the  corner  where  the  old  man 
sits ;  shows  us  the  bent  frame,  and  fallen  cheeks,  and 
closing  avenues  of  sense  ;  points  to  the  palsied  head, 
and  compels  us  to  listen  to  the  drivelling  speech,  or 


THE    CHRISTIANITY    OF    OLD    AGE.  265 

perhaps  the  childish  and  pitiable  cry;  and  then  asks, 
whether  this  is  the  being  so  divinely  gifted  and  so 
solemnly  placed,  sharer  of  the  immortality  of  God, 
and  waiting  to  embark  into  infinitude  ?  I  answer, 
—  assuredly  not;  neither  in  the  wrecked  frame, nor  in 
the  negation  of  mind,  is  there  anything  immortal ;  it 
is  not  this  frail  and  shattered  bark,  visible  to  the  eye, 
that  is  to  be  launched  upon  the  shoreless  sea.  The 
mind  within,  which  you  do  not  show  me,  whose  indi- 
cations are  for  a  time  suppressed,  —  as  they  are  in 
every  fever  that  brings  stupor  and  delirium,  in  every 
night  even  that  brings  sleep,  —  the  mind  of  whose 
high  achievements,  whose  capacious  thought,  whose 
toils  and  triumphs  of  conscience  and  affection,  living 
friends  will  reverentially  tell  you,  —  the  mind,  which 
every  moment  of  God's  time  for  seventy  years  has 
been  sedulous  to  build,  and  from  which  the  deforming 
scaffold  is  about  to  fall  away,  —  this  alone  is  the  prin- 
ciple for  which  we  claim  immortality.  Say  not  that, 
because  we  cannot  trace  its  operations,  it  is  extinct ; 
perhaps  while  you  speak,  it  may  burst  into  a  flame, 
and  contradict  you.  For  sometimes  age  is  known  to 
wake,  and  the  soul  to  kindle,  ere  it  departs ;  to  per- 
forate the  shut  gates  of  sense  with  sudden  light,  and 
gush  with  lustre  to  the  eye,  and  love  and  reason  to 
the  speech  ;  as  if  to  make  it  evident,  that  death  may 
be  nativity  ;  as  if  the  traveller,  who  had  fallen  asleep 
with  the  fatigues  of  the  way,  conscious  that  he  drew 
near  his  journey's  end,  and  warned  by  the  happy  note 
of  arrival,  looked  out  refreshed  and  eager  through  the 
'morning  air  for  the  fields  and  streams  of  his  new 
abode.  And  if  any  transient  excitement  near  the 
close  of  life,  can,  even  occasionally,  thus  resuscitate 
the  spirit ;  if  some  vehement  stroke  upon  a  chord  of 
23 


266  THE    CHRISTIANITY    OF    OLD    AGE. 

ancient  sympathy  can  sometimes  restore  it  in  its 
strength,  it  is  there  still ;  and  only  waits  that  perma- 
nent rejuvenescence  which  its  escape  into  the  infinite 
may  effect  at  once. 

It  is  not  a  little  difficult  to  understand,  in  what 
way  these  objectors  would  desire  to  improve  the  ad- 
justments of  life,  in  order  to  get  rid  of  the  grounds  of 
their  scepticism.  Would  they  totally  abolish  the  in- 
firmities of  years,  and  maintain  the  energy  of  youth 
unto  the  end?  Then  would  there  remain  no  apparent 
reason  for  removal  or  change  ;  death  would  have 
looked  tenfold  more  like  extinction  than  it  does  now ; 
and  we  should  assuredly  have  reasoned, '  If  the  Divine 
Father,  in  his  benignity,  had  intended  us  to  per- 
severe in  life  at  all,  he  would  have  left  us  in  peace  in 
this  dear  old  world.'  As  it  is,  there  appears,  after 
the  decrepitude  of  age,  an  obvious  need  of  some  such 
mighty  revolution  as  death  ;  the  mortality  of  such  a 
body  becomes  a  clear  essential  to  the  immortality  of 
the  soul ;  and  our  departure  assumes  the  probable  as- 
pect of  a  simple  migration  of  the  mind,  —  a  journey 
of  refreshment,  —  a  passage  to  new  scenes  of  that  in- 
finite universe,  to  a  mere  speck  of  which,  since  we  can 
discover  its  immensity,  it  seems  unlikely  that  we 
should  be  confined. 

Or  is  the  demand  of  a  different  kind ;  not  for  im- 
munity from  bodily  decline,  but  for  an  exemption  of 
the  soul  from  its  effects  ?  for  faculties  unconscious  of 
the  sinking  frame,  —  dwelling  in  a  tenement  of  whose 
changes  they  shall  be  independent?  And  what  is 
this,  when  you  reflect  upon  it,  but  to  ask  for  a  total 
separation  of  the  material  from  the  spiritual  element 
of  our  nature,  —  for  the  very  boon  which  we  suppose 
to  be  obtained  in  death,  a  disembodied  mind  ?  For 


THE    CHRISTIANITY    OF    OLD   AGE.  267 

a  corporeal  frame,  that  did  not  affect  the  mental 
principle,  would  no  more  be  any  proper  part  of  us, 
than  the  limbs  of  another  man,  or  the  substance  of 
the  sun ;  its  mere  juxtaposition  or  coincidence  in 
space  with  our  sentient  soul  (even  could  such  a  thing 
be  truly  affirmed),  would  not  mix  it  up  with  our 
identity.  Unless  it  were  the  interposed  medium 
through  which  we  communicated  with  the  external 
world, — the  appointed  pathway  of  sensation;  unless, 
that  is,  we  experienced  vicissitudes  of  internal  con- 
sciousness precisely  corresponding  to  all  its  external 
changes,  —  we  should  have  no  interest  in  it,  and  it 
would  have  as  little  concern  with  our  personality  as 
the  clothes  or  the  elements  in  which  we  live.  A 
hand  that  should  leave  us  affected  in  the  same  way, 
whether  it  touched  ice  or  fire ;  a  tongue  that  should 
recognize  no  difference  between  food  and  poison  ;  an 
eye  that  should  convey  to  us  the  same  impression 
through  all  its  altering  states,  —  would  be  unfitted 
for  all  its  functions,  and  be  a  mere  foreign  encum- 
brance upon  our  life.  That  our  organization  reports 
instantly,  with  a  speed  that  no  magnetic  signal  can 
surpass,  to  the  mind  within  ;  that  it  works  changes 
in  our  conscious  principle  precisely  proportionate  to 
its  own,  and  affording  a  true  measure  of  them,  —  is 
the  very  attribute  which  constitutes  its  exactitude 
and  perfection.  If,  then,  it  were  absurd  to  wish  for 
limbs  that  could  undergo  exhaustion  and  laceration 
without  our  feeling  them,  and  nerves  that  would  give 
no  knowledge  of  fever  or  inflammation,  it  would  be 
no  less  irrational  to  desire  a  release  of  the  mind  from 
those  infirmities  of  age,  which  are  but  a  long  fatigue, 
life's  final  disease.  All  the  lights  of  perception  and 
emotion  flow  in  upon  us  through  the  colored  glass  of 


268  THE    CHKISTIANITY    OF    OLD    AGE. 

our  organic  frame ;  and  however  perfect  the  power 
of  mental  vision  may  remain,  if  the  windows  be 
darkened,  the  radiance  will  be  obscure. 

And  in  the  two  most  marked  characteristics  of  old 
age,  —  the  obtuseness  of  immediate  perception,  and 
freshness  of  remote  memories,  —  may  we  not  even 
discern  an  obvious  intimation  of  the  great  future, 
and  a  fitting  preparative  for  its  approach  ?  The 
senses  become  callous  and  decline,  verging  gently  to 
the  extinction  which  awaits  them,  and  in  their  dark- 
ness permitting  the  mild  lustre  of  wisdom  and  of 
faith  —  if  it  be  there  —  to  shine  forth  and  glow;  and 
if  not,  to  show  in  what  a  night  the  soul  dwells  with- 
out them.  And  that  the  mind  should  betake  itself, 
ere  it  departs,  with  such  exclusive  attachment  to  the 
past,  is  surely  suitable  to  its  position.  True,  the 
enthusiastic  devotion  of  an  awed  spectator,  standing 
near  to  say  farewell,  naturally  takes  the  opposite 
direction,  and  steals  before  the  pilgrim  to  his  home, 
and  wonders  that  the  old  man's  talk  can  linger  so 
around  things  gone  by.  But  is  it  not  that  already 
the  thoughts  fall  into  the  order  of  judgment,  and 
practise  the  incipient  meditations  of  Heaven  ?  In 
that  world  of  which  we  have  no  experience,  we  can 
at  first  have  no  anticipation  ;  and  in  the  place  whither 
we  go  for  retribution,  we  must  begin  with  retrospect. 
All  things  and  thoughts,  all  passions  and  pursuits, 
must  live  again ;  stricken  memory  cannot  withhold 
them;  there  is  a  divination  of  conscience,  at  which 
their  ghosts  must  rise,  to  haunt  or  bless  us.  And 
when  the  old  man  incessantly  reverts  to  years  that 
had  receded  into  the  far  distance,  and  finds  scenes 
that  had  appeared  to  vanish  come  back  even  from 
his  boyhood,  and  stand  around  him  with  preternatural 


THE    CHRISTIANITY    OF    OLD    AGE.  269 

distinctness,  when  ancient  snatches  of  life's  melodies 
thrill  through  his  dreams,  and  the  faces  of  early 
friends  look  in  upon  him  often,  the  preparation  is 
significant.  He  is  gathering  his  witnesses  together, 
making  ready  the  theatre  of  trial,  and  collecting  the 
audience  for  judgment.  These  are  they  that  were 
with  him  in  his  manifold  temptations,  and  can  tell 
him  of  his  victory  or  his  fall;  that  exercised  such 
spirit  of  duty  as  was  in  him ;  whom  his  selfishness 
injured,  or  his  fidelity  blessed.  Remembrance  has 
broken  the  seals  of  its  tombs ;  its  sainted  dead  come 
forth  at  the  trump  of  God  within  the  soul,  and  declare 
the  tribunal  set. 

With  emotions,  then,  far  different  from  the  mean- 
ness of  animal  compassion,  and  the  coldness  of  doubt, 
does  the  spirit  of  Christ  teach  the  world  to  look  on 
age.  The  veneration  for  it,  which  our  religion  in- 
spires, comes  not  from  the  past  alone,  but  rather  from 
the  future.  In  any  view,  indeed,  the  long-travelled 
and  experienced  mortal,  in  whose  mind  are  the  only 
pictures  of  many  scenes  effaced,  and  time's  land- 
scape in  rare  perspective,  must  be  regarded  with 
strong  interest.  If  life  were  but  a  brief  reality,  that 
fleetly  passed  into  a  shadow  and  nothingness,  the 
point  of  vanishing  would  not  be  without  its  solemn 
grandeur.  But  with  how  profound  a  reverence  must 
we  look  on  its  last  stage,  as  entering  the  margin  of 
God's  eternity ;  as  the  land-mark  of  earth's  boundary- 
ocean,  fanned  already  by  the  winds,  and  feeling  the 
spray,  of  the  infinite ! 

Nor  are  the  feelings  less  humanizing  and  holy  with 

which  Christianity  teaches  the  aged  disciple  to  regard 

the  world  and  himself.     He  leaves  it,  —  if  he  be  a 

disciple,  —  not  with  censoriousness,  but  with  faith  ; 

23* 


270  THE    CHRISTIANITY    OF    OLD    AGE. 

knowing  that,  with  all  its  generations,  the  earth,  as 
well  as  his  own  mind,  is  a  thing  young  in  the  years 
of  eternal  Providence.     He  has  too  large  a  vision  to 
be   readily   cast   down   about  its   prospects.     If  its 
social  changes  are  not  to  his  desire  ;  if  that  for  which 
he  battled  as  for  the  true  and  good  seems  even  to  be 
retreating  from  his  hopes,  and  questionable  novelties 
to  be  deceiving  the  hearts  of  men,  —  yet  he  sinks 
without  despair,  and  waves,  as  he  retires,  a  cheerful 
and  affectionate  adieu.     He  has  too  vivid  a  sense  of 
the  brevity  of  a  human  life,  to  despond  at  any  vicis- 
situdes  that   may  occur,   any  tendencies  that  may 
disclose  themselves,  within   such    space.     He  freely 
blesses  God,  that  when,  from  its  altered  ways,  the 
world  has  become  no  longer- congenial  to  him,  he  is 
permitted  to  leave  it ;  and  he  can  rejoice  that  those 
who  remain  behind  behold  it  with  different  eyes ;  for 
he  recognizes   and   admires   God's  law,  that   those 
who  are  to  live  in  the  world  shall  not  be  out  of  love 
with  it.    From  the  mental  station  which  he  occupies, 
it  certainly  seems  as  if  twilight  were  gathering  fast 
and  leading  on  the  night ;  and  so  for  two  things  he 
is  thankful ;  that  the  vesper-bell  flings  its  note  upon 
his  ear,  and  calls  him  to  prayer  and  rest;  and  that 
on  others  of  his  race,  who  gaze  into  the  heavens  from 
a  different  point,  the  morning  seems  to  be  rising, 
and  its  fresh  breeze  to  be  up,  and  the  matin  rings  its 
summons,  —  for  always  there  must  be  prayer;  only 
at  dawn  it  leads  to  labor,  and  at  eve  to  rest.     Nor 
does  he  leave  the  world  which  has  been  his  locality 
so  long,   as   a   scene   in   which  he   has   no   further 
interest.     Possibly  even  its  future  changes  may  not 
be  hidden  from  his  view ;  and  at  all  events  his  sym- 
pathies dwell  and  will  dwell  there  still ;  and  all  that 


THE    CHRISTIANITY    OF    OLD   AGE.  271 

most  truly  constitutes  his  being,  the  work  he  has 
done,  the  wills  he  has  moved,  the  loving  thoughts 
he  has  awakened,  remain  behind  ;  enter  the  great 
structure  of  human  existence,  and  share  its  perpe- 
tuity. 

The  aged,  ere  they  depart,  are  able  to  report  to  us 
something  of  the  exactitude  of  the  Divine  retribution. 
The  justice  of  God  does  not  always  delay  and  post- 
pone its  sentence  till  it  is  inaudible  to  the  living. 
There  are  some  of  our  human  works  that  '  go  before 
us  to  judgment;'  and  the  verdict  may  be  apprehend- 
ed by  every  attentive  mind.  Our  nature  does  not 
all  die  at  the  same  moment ;  but  the  animal  elements 
begin  to  vanish,  while  the  moral  still  remain.  And 
truly  those  in  whom  the  lower  self  has  been  permitted 
to  gain  a  terrible  ascendency,  those  whose  life  has 
been  in  obedience  to  the  precept  '  eat  and  be  filled,' 
meet  their  dreary  recompense  in  age ;  one  part  of 
their  moral  probation  is  visibly  and  awfully  brought 
to  its  close ;  and  in  the  miseries  of  a  blank  and 
chafing  mind,  a  querulous  imbecility  of  temper,  a 
heart  unrefreshed  by  a  warm  sympathy,  every  eye 
may  discern  the  issue.  But  when  the  soul  has  been 
faithful  to  the  higher  purposes  of  existence ;  when 
there  has  been  a  benign  observance  of  the  moral 
relations  which  give  dignity  to  life;  when  the  sym- 
pathies of  kindred  and  neighborhood  and  society,  the 
exercise  of  intelligent  thought,  the  practice  of  unos- 
tentatious benevolence,  the  tranquil  maintenance  of 
faith  and  trust,  have  engaged  and  consecrated  the 
years  of  best  vigor,  —  there,  even  though  the  nobler 
fires  of  nature  grow  languid  and  decline,  the  mild 
light  of  a  good  heart  shines  to  the  last,  cheerful  to 
all  observers,  and  casts  no  faint  illumination  on  past 


272  THE    CHRISTIANITY    OF    OLD    AGE. 

and  future.  The  peace  of  God  full  often  survives 
the  lapse  of  meaner  comforts,  and  drives  away  every 
trace  of  fretful  ness  from  age  and  terror  from  death ; 
leaving  simply  the  rest  incident  to  the  completion  of 
a  good  and  worthy  fight ;  and  preparing  all  hearts  to 
hope  for  a  quiet  migration  to  a  better  country,  even 
a  heavenly.  Calm  as  this,  after  a  fiery  career,  was 
the  retirement  of  '  such  a  one  as  Paul  the  Aged,' 
when  'the  time  of  his  departure  was  at  hand.' 


XXII. 

NOTHING    HUMAN   EVER    DIES. 

ECCLESIASTES   VII.    17. 
WHY   SHOULDST    THOU   DIE   BEFORE   THY   TIME? 

THE  only  resource  for  a  man  without  faith,  is  to 
be  also  without  love;  which,  indeed,  by  the  com- 
passion of  heaven,  he  will  naturally  be.  For  scarcely 
can  anything  be  more  serious  than  the  aspect  which 
life  assumes,  when  any  considerable  portion  of  it  lies 
in  retrospect  beneath  an  affectionate  eye  that  can  dis- 
cern no  more  than  its  visible  and  palpable  relations. 
A  few  years  of  unconscious  gain,  followed  by  a  long 
process  of  conscious  loss,  complete  the  story  of  our 
being  here.  The  best  shelter  that  the  world  affords 
us  is  the  first,  —  the  affections  into  which  we  are 
born,  and  which  are  too  natural  for  us  to  know  their 
worth,  till  they  are  disturbed;  —  for  constant  bless- 
ings, like  constant  pressures,  are  the  last  to  be  dis- 
covered. During  the  whole  period  of  childhood,  when 
the  most  rapid  and  astonishing  development  of  vi- 
tality and  acquisition  of  power  are  going  on,  the 
wonder  and  the  bliss  are  hidden  from  our  eyes; 
gratitude  is  scarcely  possible ;  and  the  delighted  gaze 
of  the  contemplating  spectator  is  unintelligible.  We 
wake  up  at  our  first  grave  affliction;  our  blindness  is 
removed  by  pain ;  the  film  is  purified  by  tears,  and 


274  NOTHING    HUMAN    EVEK    DIES. 

alas !  the  moment  sorrow  gives  us  sight,  the  good 
that  we  behold  is  gone.  And  thenceforth  we  love 
knowingly,  and  lose  constantly;  and  after  dreaming 
that  all  things  were  given  to  us,  or  even  by  nature 
our  own,  we  find  them  only  lent,  and  see  in  our  re- 
maining years  the  undeciphered  list  of  their  recall. 
Standing  on  the  shore  which  bounds  the  ocean  of 
the  Past,  we  see  treasure  after  treasure  receding  in 
the  distance,  or  thrown  into  that  insatiable  waste,  on 
whose  surface  they  make  a  momentary  smile  of  light, 
then  leave  the  gulf  in  darkness.  Into  that  deep,  year 
after  year  has  sunk,  no  less  rich  than  this*  in  spoils 
from  the  human  heart.  Our  fathers  and  our  early 
homes,  the  dream  of  our  first  friendships,  the  surprise 
of  new  affections,  and  all  the  delicious  marvels  of  life 
yet  fresh,  have  vanished  there.  And  soon,  when  we 
have  been  the  losers  long  enough,  we  shall  become 
the  lost ;  and  vainly  struggle  with  the  sweep  of  the 
unfathomable  sea.  Whether  death,  which  treads 
closely  on  the  step  of  life  upon  our  world,  shall  ever 
absolutely  overtake  it,  and  finally  stop  the  race  of 
beauty  and  of  love  which  now  is  perpetually  begun 
afresh  ;  —  whether  the  chills  of  winter,  transient  now, 
will  become  eternal,  and  suppress  for  ever  the  flowers 
which  can  yet  steal  out  again  on  the  bosom  of  the 
earth  ; — whether  the  frost  of  mortality  shall  hereafter 
arrest  the  life-stream  of  our  race,  and  dismiss  us  to 
that  extinction  which  has  fallen  on  other  tribes  before 
us ;  —  and  the  clouds  fly,  and  the  shrill  hail  fall  over 
a  naked  world,  —  we  know  not.  But  to  us,  in  suc- 
cession, all  things  die.  The  past  contains  all  that 
time  has  rendered  dear  and  familiar;  and  that  passes 

*  This  Discourse  was  preached  on  the  last  day  of  the  year. 


NOTHING    HUMAN    EVER    DIES.  275 

silently  away;  the  future  contains  whatever  is  cold 
and  strange ;  and  its  mysteries  come  swiftly  on  us. 
Yet  in  this  melancholy  retrospect,  natural  as  it  is 
to  our  affections,  there  is  a  great  deal  of  illusion, 
which  is  the  occasion  of  half  its  sadness.  When 
we  go  out  of  ourselves  and  our  affairs,  and  seize 
a  higher  point  of  view,  we  see  that  this  world  is  no 
such  collection  of  perishable  things,  after  all ;  that  as 
God  lives  ever  in  it,  he  gathers  around  him  all  that 
is  most  like  him,  and  suffers  nothing  that  is  excellent 
to  die.  There  are  things  in  this  world  which  are  not 
meant  to  perish ;  —  works  which  survive  the  work- 
men, and  multiply  blessings  when  they  are  gone,  and 
make  all  who  lend  a  faithful  hand  to  them,  part  of 
the  husbandry  of  God,  laborers  with  Him  on  that 
great  field  of  time,  whose  culture  and  whose  harvests 
are  everlasting.  The  pains  we  spend  upon  our  mor- 
tal selves,  will  perish  with  ourselves ;  but  the  care  we 
give  out  of  a  good  heart  to  others,  the  efforts  of  dis- 
interested duty,  the  deeds  and  thoughts  of  pure  affec- 
tion, are  never  lost;  they  are  liable  to  no  waste ;  and 
are  like  a  force  that  propagates  itself  for  ever,  chang- 
ing its  place,  but  not  losing  its  intensity.  In  short, 
there  is  a  sense  in  which  nothing1  human  ever  perishes  ; 
nothing,  at  least,  which  proceeds  from  the  higher  and 
characteristic  part  of  a  man's  nature  ;  nothing  which 
comes  of  his  mind  and  conscience;  nothing  which 
he  does  as  a  subject  of  God's  moral  law.  His  good 
and  ill  lives  after  him,  an  endless  blessing  or  a  last- 
ing curse ;  a  consideration  this  which  gives  dignity  to 
the  humblest  duty,  and  enormity  to  careless  wrong. 
I  do  not  now  refer  to  the  consequences  of  conduct  in 
a  future  life;  but  to  a  certain  perpetual  and  inde- 
structible influence  it  must  have  upon  this  world.  It 


276  NOTHING    HUMAN    EVER    DIES. 

is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  any  service  rendered  to 
mankind,  any  interesting  relation  of  human  life,  any 
exhibition  of  moral  greatness,  even  any  peculiar  con- 
dition of  society,  can  ever  be  lost;  their  form  only 
disappears ;  their  value  still  remains,  and  their  office 
is  everlastingly  performed.  Material  structures  are 
dissolved,  their  identity  and  functions  are  gone. 
But  mind  partakes  of  the  eternity  of  the  great  parent 
spirit;  and  thoughts,  truths,  emotions,  once  given  to 
the  world,  are  never  past;  they  exist  as  truly,  and 
perform  their  duty  as  actively,  a  thousand  years  after 
their  origin,  as  on  their  day  of  birth.  I  would  en- 
deavor to  illustrate  this  in  some  separate  instances. 

1.  The  acts  of  our  individual  minds  are  never 
lost. 

Every  human  deed  of  right  or  wrong  fulfils  two 
offices;  it  produces  certain  immediate  extrinsic  re- 
sults ;  and  it  contributes  to  form  some  internal  dispo- 
sition or  affection.  Every  act  of  wise  benevolence 
goes  forth,  and  alleviates  a  suffering ;  it  goes  within, 
and  gives  intenser  force  to  the  spirit  of  mercy.  Every 
act  of  vindictiveness  goes  forth,  and  creates  a  woe ; 
it  goes  within,  and  inflames  the  diseases  of  the  pas- 
sions. In  the  one  relation,  it  may  be  momentary  and 
transient;  in  the  other,  irremediable  and  permanent. 
In  the  one  its  dealings  are  with  pain  and  physical  ill ; 
in  the  other  with  goodness  or  with  guilt,  and  the 
solemn  determinations  of  the  human  will.  And  in- 
asmuch as  physical  ill  is  temporary,  while  moral 
agencies  are  eternal —  (for  death  is  the  end  of  pain, 
but  where  is  the  end  of  sin?) — inasmuch  as  a  dis- 
interested and  holy  mind  is  the  sure  fountain  of  heal- 
ing and  of  peace,  —  and  a  heart  torn  by  passions 
fierce  or  foul,  is  at  once  the  seat  and  source  of  a 


NOTHING    HUMAN    EVER    DIES.  277 

thousand  miseries, —  no  particular  natural  good  or 
evil  can  be  compared  in  importance  with  the  eternal 
distinctions    between    right    and   wrong;    nor    any 
effect  of  an  action  be  ranked  in  magnitude  with  its 
influence  on  human  affections  and  character.     The 
great  office  of  virtue  (we  are  told)   is  to  bless  man- 
kind ;  very  well,  but  then  the  greatest  blessing  is  in 
the  increase  of  virtue.     The  essential  character  then 
of  every  choice  we  make  is  to  be  found  in  its  ten- 
dency to  promote  or  to  impair  the  purity  and  good 
order,  the  generosity  and  moral  dignity  of  the  mind; 
and  this  element  of  our  actions  can  never  die ;  but 
survives  in  our  present   selves,  more  truly  than  the 
juices  of  the  soil  in  the  leaves  and  blossoms  of  a  tree. 
Such  as  we  are,  we  are  the  offspring  of  the  past; 
'  the  child   is  father  to  the  man ; '   our  present  char- 
acters are  the  result  of  all  that  we  have  desired  and 
done ;  every  deed  has  contributed  something  to  the 
structure,  and  exists  there  as  literally  as  the  stone  in 
the  pyramid  on  whose  courses  it  was  once  laid.    The 
action  of  the  moral  agent  does  not  consist  in  the  con- 
traction of  a  muscle  or  the  movement  of  a  limb,  — 
and  this  is  all  that  is  really  transitory,  —  but  in  the 
dispositions  of  the  rnind,  which  are  indelible.     Our 
guilt  as  well  as  our  goodness,  once  contracted,  is  in- 
effaceable.     No  power  within  the  circuit  of  God's 
providence  can  blot  out  an  idea  from  the  pages  of 
the  secret  heart,  or  cancel  a  force  of  desire  that  has 
once  gone   forth.     How  vain   then  is  the  effort  of 
thought  to  fly  from  the  deed  of  sin,  the  moment  it  is 
finished,  —  the  hurry  of  conscience  to  reach  a  place 
of  greater  peace,  —  the  eager  whisper  of  self-love  that 
says,  the  lapse  is  over,  and  a  firmer  march  of  duty  may 
be  forthwith  begun !    If  the  foul  thing  were  cemented 
24 


278  NOTHING    HITMAN    EYER    DIES. 

to  the  hour  that  witnessed  its  commission,  you  might 
escape  it ;  but  being  in  the  mind,  you  have  it  with 
you  still,  however  fast  you  fly,  and  however  little  you 
look  behind.     Do  you  imagine  that,  the  evil  passion 
having  spent  its  energy,  you  will  be  safer  in  its  weak- 
ness now  ?    It  is  the  falsest  of  all  the  sophistries  of  sin ! 
A  moral  impulse,  unlike  a  physical  force,  is  not  ex- 
hausted, but  augmented,  by  every  effort  it  puts  forth ; 
not  only  does  it  part  with  no  portion  of  its  power,  — 
but  it  receives  a  fresh  intensity.     There,  still  does  it 
abide,  more  ready  than  ever  to  come  forth  and  assert 
itself  with  strength.     Every  one's  present  mind  is,  in 
truth,  the  standing  memorial,  distinct  and  legible  to 
the  eye  of  God,  of  all  that  he  has  willed  in  time  past : 
the  conduct  and  feelings  of  to-day  are  the  resultant  of 
ten  thousand  forces  of  previous  volition,  nor  would 
any  act  remain  the  same  if  any  one  of  its  predeces- 
sors were  withdrawn  or  changed.     Even  the  silent 
and  hidden  currents  of  desire  and  thought  leave  their 
traces  visible ;   as  waves  in  the  deeper  sea  are  dis- 
covered, when  the  waters  ebb,  by  the  ripple-mark 
congealed  upon  the  sand.     Thus  the  acts  of  our  will 
do  not  and  cannot  perish ;  they  then  truly  begin  to 
live,  when  they  are  past ;  for  then  only  do  they  be- 
come deposits  in  our  memory,  and  contributions  to 
our   affections;    then   only   does   their   internal    and 
mental  history  commence,  and  they  put  forth  that 
viewless  attraction  by  which,  more  than  before,  the 
heart  gravitates  towards  good  or  ill.     There  is  conso- 
lation as  well  as  terror  in  this  thought.     No  strife  of 
a  good  heart,  no  performance  of  a  kind  hand,  has 
been  without   effect.     Not   in  vain   have   been   the 
struggles,  however  trivial  they  seem,  of  our  early  con- 
science, the  dreams  of  a  departed  enthusiasm,  —  the 


NOTHING    HUMAN    EVEB,    DIES.  279 

high  ambition  of  our  untried  virtue;  these  things  are 
with  us  always,  even  unto  the  end:  in  our  colder 
maturity,  even  in  the  frosts  of  age,  their  central  glow 
is  with  our  nature  secretly,  and  relaxes  unobserved 
the  binding  crust  of  years.  Perishable  deeds  and 
transient  emotions  are  the  materials  wherewith  God 
has  given  us  to  build  up  the  eternal  character;  and 
to  raise  the  tower  by  which  we  escape  the  floods  of 
death,  and,  with  no  impious  intent,  climb  the  man- 
sions of  the  skies.  Steadily  must  the  structure  rise, 
like  the  walls  of  the  persecuted  Jerusalem  of  old,  at 
which  some  toiled  while  others  watched.  Unceas- 
ingly we  must  build;  parched,  it  may  be,  beneath  the 
sultry  sun,  faint  and  sinking  but  for  draughts  from 
the  '  wells  of  salvation ; '  on  the  side  of  the  desert,  it 
may  be,  where  we  should  shudder  at  the  tempest's 
moan,  but  for  sweet  songs  of  Zion  that  float  to  us 
from  within ;  —  exposed,  it  may  be,  to  treacherous 
and  banded  foes,  whose  surprises  would  terrify,  but 
for  the  trusty  weapon  and  the  well-trained  arm ;  —  at 
midnight  and  alone,  it  may  be,  cheerless,  but  for  the 
eyes  of  Heaven  that  look  upon  our  toil,  and  the 
streaks  of  the  East,  which  promise  us  a  day-spring. 
Ye  must  build,  over  the  valley  and  on  the  rock,  till  a 
wall  of  impregnable  protection  is  thrown  around  the 
sanctuary  within,  and  in  securest  peace  ye  can  go  in 
and  out  the  temple  of  God's  spirit ;  — '  which  temple 
ye  are.' 

2.  The  social  and  domestic  relations  whose  loss 
we  mourn  do  not  really  perish,  when  they  seem  to 
die. 

Those  relations,  it  is  needless  to  say,  do  not  con- 
sist in  the  mere  juxtaposition  of  so  many  human 
beings.  A  certain  number  of  animal  li ves,  that  are  of 


280  NOTHING    HUMAN    EVER.    DIES. 

prescribed  ages,  that  eat  and  drink  together,  and  that 
sleep  under  the  same  roof,  by  no  means  make  a 
family.  Almost  as  well  might  we  say,  that  it  is  the 
bricks  of  a  house  that  make  a  home.  There  may  be 
a  home  in  the  forest  or  the  wilderness;  and  there 
may  be  a  family,  with  all  its  best  blessings,  though 
half  its  members  may  be  in  foreign  lands  or  in  an- 
other world.  It  is  the  gentle  memories,  the  mutual 
thought,  the  desire  to  bless,  the  sympathies  that  meet 
when  duties  are  apart,  the  fervor  of  the  parent's 
prayers,  the  persuasion  of  filial  love,  the  sister's  pride 
and  the  brother's  benediction,  that  constitute  the  true 
elements  of  domestic  life,  and  sanctify  the  dwellings 
of  our  birth.  Abolish  the  sentiments  which  pervade 
and  animate  the  machinery  and  movements  of  our 
social  being,  and  their  whole  value  obviously  disap- 
pears. The  objects  of  affection  are  nothing  to  us  but 
for  the  affection  which  they  excite ;  it  is  for  this  that 
they  exist;  this  removed,  their,  relation  loses  its 
identity;  this  preserved,  it  undergoes  no  essential 
change.  Friends  are  assigned  to  us  for  the  sake  of 
friendship;  and  homes  for  the  sake  of  love;  and  while 
they  perform  these  offices  in  our  hearts,  in  essence 
and  in  spirit,  they  are  with  us  still.  The  very  tears 
we  shed  over  their  loss  are  proofs  that  they  are  not 
lost;  for  what  is  grief,  but  love  itself  restricted  to 
acts  of  memory  and  longing  for  its  other  tasks,  —  im- 
prisoned in  the  past,  and  striving  vainly  to  be  free  ? 
The  cold  hearts  that  never  deeply  mourn  lose  noth- 
ing, for  they  have  no  stake  to  lose ;  the  genial  souls, 
that  deem  it  no  shame  to  weep,  give  evidence  that 
they  have,  fresh  and  living  still,  the  sympathies,  to 
nurture  which  our  human  ties  are  closely  drawn. 
God  only  lends  us  the  objects  of  our  affection ;  the 


NOTHING    HUMAN    EVEK   DIES.  281 

affection  itself  he  gives  us  in  perpetuity.  In  this  best 
sense,  instances  are  not  rare  in  which  the  friend  or  the 
parent  then  first  begins  to  live  for  us,  when  death  has 
withdrawn  him  from  our  eyes,  and  given  him  over 
exclusively  to  our  hearts ;  at  least  I  have  known  a 
mother  among  the  sainted  blest,  sway  the  will  of  a 
thoughtful  child  far  more  than  her  living  voice  ;  brood 
with  a  kind  of  serene  omnipresence  over  his  affec- 
tions ;  and  sanctify  his  passing  thought  by  the  mild 
vigilance  of  her  pure  and  loving  eye.  And  what  bet- 
ter life  for  him  could  she  have  than  this?  Nay, 
standing  as  each  man  does  in  the  centre  of  a  wide 
circumference  of  social  influences,  recipient  as  he  is  of 
innumerable  impressions  from  the  mighty  human 
heart,  his  inward  being  may  be  justly  said  to  consist 
far  more  in  others'  lives  than  in  his  own  ;  without 
them  and  alone,  he  would  have  missed  the  greater 
part  of  the  thoughts  and  emotions  which  make  up 
his  existence ;  and  when  he  dies,  he  carries  away 
their  life  rather  than  his  own.  He  dwells  still  below 
within  their  minds ;  their  image  in  his  soul  (which 
perhaps  is  the  best  element  of  their  being)  passes 
away  to  the  world  incorruptible  above. 

3.  All  that  is  noble  in  the  world's  past  history, 
and  especially  the  minds  of  the  great  and  good,  are 
in  like  manner  never  lost. 

The  true  records  of  mankind,  the  human  annals  of 
the  earth,  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  changes  of  geo- 
graphical names,  in  the  shifting  boundaries  of  do- 
minion, in  the  travels  and  adventures  of  the  baubles 
of  royalty,  or  even  in  the  undulations  of  the  greater 
and  lesser  waves  of  population.  We  have  learned 
nothing,  till  we  have  penetrated  far  beyond  these 
casual  and  external  changes,  which  are  of  interest 
24+ 


282  NOTHING    HUMAN    EVER   DIES. 

only  as  the  effect  and  symptoms  of  the  great  mental 
vicissitudes  of  our  race.    History  is  an  account  of  the 
past  experience  of  humanity  ;  and  this,  like  the  life 
of  the  individual,  consists  in  the  ideas  and  sentiments, 
the  deeds  and  passions,  the  truths  and  toils,  the  virtues 
and  the  guilt,  of  the  mind  and   heart  within.     We 
have  a  deep  concern  in  preserving  from  destruction 
the  thoughts  of  the  past,  the  leading  conceptions  of 
all  remarkable  forms  of  civilization  ;  the  achievements 
of  genius,  of  virtue,  and  of  high  faith.     And  in  this, 
nothing  can  disappoint  us :  for  though  these  things 
may  be  individually  forgotten,  collectively  they  sur- 
vive, and  are  in  action  still.     All  the  past  ages  of  the 
world  were  necessary  to  the  formation  of  the  present ; 
they  are  essential  ingredients  in  the  events  that  occur 
daily  before  our  eyes.     There  is  no  period  so  ancient, 
no  country  so  remote,  that  it  could  be  cancelled  with- 
out producing  a  present  shock  upon  the  earth.     One 
layer  of  time   has    Providence   piled   up   upon   an- 
other for  immemorial  ages ;  we  that  live  stand  now 
upon  this  '  great  mountain  of  the  Lord ; '  were  the 
strata  below  removed,  the  fabric  and  ourselves  would 
fall  into  ruins.     Had  Greece,  or  Rome,  or  Palestine 
been  other  than  they  were,  Christianity  could  not 
have  been  what  it  is  ;  had  Romanism  been  different, 
Protestantism  could  not  have  been  the  same,  and  we 
might  not  have  been  here  this  day.     The  separate 
civilizations    of    past    centuries    may   be    of   colors 
singly  indiscernible ;  but  in  truth  they  are  prismatic 
rays  which,  united,  form  our  present  light.     And  do 
we  look  back  on  the  great  and  good,  lamenting  that 
they  are  gone  ?     Do  we  bend  in  commemorative  rev- 
erence before  them,  and  wish  that  our  lot  had  been 
cast  in  their  better  days  ?     What   is   the  peculiar 


NOTHING    HUMAN    EVER   DIES.  283 

fun  ction  which  Heaven  assigns  to  such  minds,  when 
tenants  of  our  earth  ?     Have  the  great  and  good  any 
nobler  office  than  to  touch  the  human  heart  with  deep 
veneration  for  greatness  and  goodness  ?     To  kindle 
in  the  understanding  the  light  of  more  glorious  con- 
ceptions, and  in  the  conscience  the  fires  of  a  holier 
virtue  ?     And  that  we  grieve  for  their  departure,  and 
invoke  their  names,  is  proof  that  they  are  performing 
such  blessed  office  still, — that  this,  their  highest  life 
for  others,  compared  with  which  their  personal  agency 
is  nothing,  is  not  extinct    Indeed,  God  has  so  framed 
our  memory,  that  it  is  the  infirmities  of  noble  souls 
that  chiefly  fall  into  the  shadows  of  the  past ;  while 
whatever  is  fair  and  excellent  in  their  lives,  comes 
forth  from  the  gloom  in  ideal  beauty,  and  leads  us 
on  through  the  wilds  and  mazes  of  our  mortal  way. 
Nor  does  the  retrospect,  thus  glorified,  deceive  us  by 
any   fallacy;   for   things   present  with   us  we  com- 
prehend far  less  completely,  and  appreciate  less  im- 
partially, than  things  past.     Nothing  can  become  a 
clear  object  of  our  thought,  while  we  ourselves  are  in 
it ;  we  understand  not  our  childhood,  till  we  have  left 
it ;  our  youth,  till  it  has  departed  ;  our  life  itself,  till  it 
verges  to  its  close ;  or  to  the  majesty  of  genius  and 
holiness,  till  we  look  back  on  them  as  fled.     Each 
portion  of  our  human  experience  becomes  in  succes- 
sion intelligible  to  us,  as  we  quit  it  for  a  new  point 
of  view.     God  has   stationed   us   at  the  intersecting 
line  between  the  known  and  the  unknown  ;  he  has 
planted  us  on  a  floating  island  of  mystery,  from  which 
we  survey  the  expanse  behind  in  the  clear  light  of 
experience  and  truth,  and  cleave  the  waves,  invisible, 
yet  ever  breaking,  of  the  unbounded  future.     Our  very 
progress,  which  is  our  peculiar  glory,  consists  in  at 


284  NOTHING    HUMAN    EVER  DIES. 

once  losing  and  learning  the  past ;  in  gaining  fresh 
stations  from  which  to  take  a  wider  retrospect,  and 
become  more  deeply  aware  of  the  treasures  we  have 
used.  We  are  never  so  conscious  of  the  succession 
of  blessings  which  God's  providence  has  heaped  on 
us,  as  when  lamenting  the  lapse  of  years ;  and  are 
then  richest  in  the  fruits  of  time,  when  mourning  that 
time  steals  those  fruits  away. 


ENDEAVOURS 


AFTER   TDK 


CHRISTIAN    LIFE. 


SECOND   SERIES. 


TO 

REV.   JOHN  HAMILTON   THOM, 

THIS   VOLUME, 
THE    EXPRESSION    OP    A    HEART 

ENLARGED   BT  HIS   FRIENDSHIP 
AND     OFTEN     AIDED     BY     HIS     WISDOM, 

IS   DEDICATED, 

IN    MEMORY    OF 

MANY     LABORS     LIGHTENED     BY     PARTNERSHIP. 

PURPOSES    INVIGORATED    BY    SYMPATHY, 
AND     THE    VICISSITUDES    OF    YEARS 

BALANCED   BY 
CONSTANCY   OF  AFFECTION. 


PREFACE  TO  SECOND  SERIES. 


A  GIANCE  at  the  contents  of  this  Volume  will  show  that 
it  does  not  fulfil  the  intentions  avowed  in  the  preface  to  the 
former  volume.  It  does  not  refer  specially  to  the  Ministry 
of  Christ,  or  to  the  Pauline  gospel ;  much  less  does  it  pre- 
tend to  investigate  the  proper  definition  of  Christianity. 
The  hope  of  treating  these  subjects,  in  a  manner  at  all 
suitable  to  my  estimate  of  them,  still  recedes  into  the  dis- 
tance. The  materials  indeed  are  not  wholly  unprovided  ; 
or  I  should  not  have  ventured  on  the  pledge  which  still 
waits  to  be  redeemed  ;  but  a  growing  sense  of  their  inade- 
quacy makes  me  wonder  that  I  could  ever  think  them 
worthy  of  my  reader's  acceptance ;  and  induces  me  to  with- 
hold them,  till  the  deficiencies  can  be  in  some  measure 
supplied.  Should  the  needful  leisure  never  arrive,  or 
should  I  finally  esteem  myself  not  qualified  for  the  task  to 
which,  perhaps  with  presumptuous  earnestness,  I  once 
aspired,  I  shall  indeed  regret  my  inconsiderate  promise, 
but  be  clear  of  reproach  for  less  considerate  performance. 

Though  however  the  present  volume,  like  its  predecessor, 
is  altogether  practical  and  unsystematic,  there  is  a  sense  in 
which  it  may  be  regarded  as  a  step  towards  the  completion 
of  the  original  design.  The  prevalent  differences  of  belief 
on  questions  of  theology  have  their  secret  foundation  in  dif- 
ferent philosophies  of  religion ;  and  these  philosophies  are 
the  product  of  moral  experience  and  self-scrutiny,  so  as 
always  to  reflect  the  conception  of  human  nature  most 
familiar  to  the  disciple's  mind.  Hence,  controversies  ap- 


Vi  PKEFACE    TO    SECOND    SEKIES. 

patently  historical  cannot  be  settled  by  appeal  to  history 
alone  ;  no  metaphysical  disputes,  by  metaphysics  only  ;  but 
will  ultimately  resort  for  their  answer  to  the  sentiments  and 
affections  wakened  into  predominant  activity  by  the  litera- 
ture, the  teachings  and  the  social  condition  of  the  age.  No 
one  can  observe  the  changes  of  faith  and  the  causes  which 
determine  them,  without  discovering  that  the  order  of  fact 
reverses  the  order  of  theory ;  that  the  feelings  of  men  must 
be  changed  in  detail,  their  perceptions  be  awakened  in  fresh 
directions,  their  tastes  be  drawn  by  new  admirations,  before 
any  reasoning  can  avail  to  establish  an  altered  system  of 
religious  thought.  Who  can  suppose  that  the  different 
estimates  made  of  the  authority  of  Scripture  arc  really  the 
result  of  historical  research,  and  are  simply  so  many  varieties 
of  critical  judgment  ?  Is  it  not  obvious  that  the  sacred 
writings  are,  in  every  case,  allowed  to  retain  precisely  the 
residue  of  authority  which,  according  to  the  believer's  view 
of  our  nature  and  our  life,  is  unsupplied  from  any  other 
source  ?  If  this  be  so,  the  psychology  of  religion  must  have 
precedence,  —  I  do  not  say  in  dignity,  but  in  time,  —  of  its 
documentary  criticism ;  and  every  word  faithfully  spoken 
from  the  consciousness  of  a  living  man  contributes  a  prelimi- 
nary to  the  inquiry  as  to  the  inspiration  of  ancient  books. 
I  am  not  ashamed  to  confess,  that  extensive  and,  in  the  end, 
systematic  changes  in  the  opinions  I  derived  from  sect  and 
education,  have  had  no  higher  origin  than  self-examina- 
tion and  reflection,  —  a  more  careful  interrogation  of  that 
internal  experience,  of  which  the  superficial  interpretation  is 
so  seductive  to  indolence  and  so  prolific  in  error.  And  pos- 
sibly, a  volume  like  the  present,  should  it  at  all  awaken  in 
others  the  sentiments  from  which  it  proceeds  in  myself,  may 
indirectly  lead  to  the  recognition,  on  their  proper  evidence 
of  consciousness,  of  those  very  truths,  which  in  a  more 
systematic  work,  I  could  only  aim  to  protect  from  the  ob- 
jections of  philosophy,  and  reconcile  with  the  results  of 
criticism. 


PREFACE    TO    SECOND    SERIES.  Vll 

I  have  preserved  what  I  have  to  say  in  its  original  form  of 
discourses  prepared  for  the  pulpit.  I  have  always  felt  indig- 
nant with  those  preachers  who,  when  they  resort  to  the  press, 
seem  ashamed  of  their  vocation,  and  disguise,  under  new 
shapes  and  names,  the  materials  originally  embodied  in 
Sermons.  I  should  as  soon  think  of  turning  a  sonnet  into 
an  epistle,  a  ballad  into  a  reveiw,  or  a  dirge  into  an  obituary. 
It  must  be  a  bad  sermon  that  can  be  made  into  a  good 
treatise,  or  even  a  good  '  Oration.'  In  virtue  of  the  close 
affinity,  perhaps  ultimate  identity,  of  Religion  and  Poetry, 
preaching  is  essentially  a  lyric  expression  of  the  soul,  an 
utterance  of  meditation  in  sorrow,  hope,  love,  and  joy,  from 
a  representative  of  the  human  heart  in  its  divine  relations. 
In  proportion  as  we  quit  this  view,  and  prominently  intro- 
duce the  idea  of  a  preceptive  and  monitory  function,  we 
retreat  from  the  true  prophetic  interpretation  of  the  office 
back  into  the  old  sacerdotal ;  —  or  (what  is  not  perhaps  so 
different  a  distinction  as  it  may  appear)  from  the  properly 
religions  to  the  simply  moral.  A.  ministry  of  mere  instruc- 
tion and  persuasion,  which  addresses  itself  primarily  to  the 
Understanding  and  the  Will,  which  deals  mainly  with  facts 
and  reasonings,  with  hopes  and  fears,  may  furnish  us  with 
the  expositions  of  the  lecture-room,  the  commandments  of 
the  altar,  the  casuistry  of  the  confessional ;  but  it  falls  short 
of  that  true  '  testimony  of  God,'  that  personal  effusion  of 
conscience  and  affection,  which  distinguishes  the  reformed 
preaching  from  the  catholic  homily.  Were  this  distinction 
duly  apprehended,  there  would  be  a  less  eager  demand  for 
extemporaneous  preaching  ;  which  may  be  the  vehicle  of 
admirable  disquisitions,  convincing  arguments,  impressive 
speeches ;  but  is  as  little  likely  to  produce  a  genuine  Ser- 
mon, as  the  practice  of  improvising  to  produce  a  great  poem. 
The  thoughts  and  aspirations  which  look  direct  to  God,  and 
the  kindling  of  which  among  a  fraternity  of  men  constitutes 
social  worship,  are  natives  of  solitude ;  the  spectacle  of  an 
assembly  is  a  hindrance  to  their  occurrence ;  and  though, 


viii  PREFACE    TO    SECOND    SERIES. 

where  they  have  been  devoutly  set  down  beforehand,  they 
may  be  re-assumed  under  such  obstacle,  they  would  not 
spontaneously  rise,  till  the  presence  of  a  multitude  was  for- 
gotten, and  by  a  rare  effort  of  abstraction  the  loneliness  of 
the  spirit  was  restored.  The  faculty  of  fluent  speech  is  no 
doubt  worthy  of  cultivation  for  various  civic  and  moral  ends  ; 
but  if  it  were  once  adopted  as  the  instrument  of  preaching, 
I  am  persuaded  that  the  pulpit  would  exercise  a  far  lower, 
though  perhaps  a  wider,  influence  ;  would  be  a  powerful 
agent  of  theological  discussion,  of  social  criticism,  of  moral 
and  political  censorship,  but  would  lose  its  noblest  element 
of  religion.  The  devout  genius  of  England  would  have 
occasion  deeply  to  lament  a  change,  which  would  reduce  to 
the  same  class  with  the  newspaper  article  a  form  of  composi- 
tion, enabling  us  to  rank  the  names  of  Taylor,  Barrow, 
Leighton,  Butler,  with  the  poets  and  philosophers  of  our 
country.  At  all  events,  he  who  finds  room,  under  the  con- 
ditions of  the  Sermon,  to  interest  and  engage  his  whole  soul, 
would  be  guilty  of  affectation,  were  he  to  disown  the  occa- 
sion which  wakes  up  his  worthiest  spirit,  and  which,  however 
narrow  when  measured  by  the  capacities  of  other  men,  is 
adequate  to  receive  his  best  thoughts  and  aspirations.  I  am 
therefore  well  content  to  mingle  with  the  crowd  of  Sermon- 
izers. 

It  would  be  ungrateful,  were  I  not  to  acknowledge,  as  one 
of  the  results  of  the  former  volume  of  this  work,  the  delight- 
ful and  unsought-for  intercourse  it  has  opened  to  me  with 
persons,  whom  it  is  an  honor  to  know,  of  various  religious 
denominations.  In  the  divided  state  of  English  society,  a 
work  which  touches  any  springs  of  religious  affection  com- 
mon to  several  classes,  performs  at  least  a  seasonable,  though 
very  simple  and  natural,  office.  It  is  happily  an  office  which 
every  day  renders  easier  to  earnest  men.  For  there  is  un- 
doubtedly an  increasing  body  of  persons  in  this  country, 
who  are  rapidly  escaping  from  the  restraints  of  sects ;  who 
are  not  unaware  of  the  new  conditions  under  which  the 


PREFACE    TO    SECOND    SERIES.  IX 

Christianity  of  the  present  day  exists  ;  and  who  are  ready 
to  join  hand  and  heart  in  order  to  give  free  scope  to  the 
essential  truths  and  influences  of  our  religion,  in  combina- 
tion with  the  manly  exercise  of  thought,  and  just  conces- 
sions to  modern  knowledge.  To  find  one's-self  in  sympathy 
with  such  men  is  a  heartfelt  privilege,  superior  to  all  personal 
distinction ;  it  is  to  share  in  an  escape  from  the  worst  preju- 
dices of  the  present,  and  in  the  best  auguries  of  the  coming 
age. 


CONTENTS   OF   SECOND   SERIES. 


XXIII.   WHERE  IS  THY  GOD? 

XXIT.    THE  SORROW  WITH  DOWNWARD  LOOK 

XXV.   THE  SHADOW  OF  DEATH     . 
XXVI.    GREAT  HOPES  FOR  GREAT  SOULS 
XXVII.    LO  !    GOD  IS  HERE     .... 
XXVIII.   CHRISTIAN  SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 
XXIX.   THE  UNCLOUDED  HEART     . 
XXX.    HELP  THOU  MINE  UNBELIEF  ! 
XXXI.    HAVING,  DOING,  AND  BEING 
XXXII.    THE  FREE-MAN  OF  CHRIST 
XXXIII.    THE  GOOD  SOLDIER  OF  JESUS  CHRIST 

XXXIV.  THE  REALM  OF  ORDER  . 

XXXV.  THE  CHRISTIAN  DOCTRINE  OF  MERIT    . 

xxxvi.  THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT 

XXXVII.   LOOKING  UP,  AND  LIFTING  UP   . 
XXXVIII.    THE  CHRISTIAN  TIME-VIEW     . 
XXXIX.    THE  FAMILY  IN  HEAVEN  AND  EARTH  . 
XL.    THE  SINGLE  AND  THE  EVIL  EYE 
XLI.    THE  SEVEN  SLEEPERS 

XLII.    THE  SPHERE  OF  SILENCE. I.    MAN'S 

XL1II.    THE  SPHERE  OF  SILENCE.  —  II.    GOD'S. 


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XXIII. 

WHERE    IS    THY    GOD? 

EZEKIEL    Till.    10-12. 

SO  I  WENT  IX  AND  SAW:  AND  BEHOLD  EVERT  FORM  OF  CREEPING 
THINGS  AND  ABOMINABLE  BEASTS,  AND  ALL  THE  IDOLS  OF  THE 
HOUSE  OF  ISRAEL,  PORTRAYED  UPON  THE  WALLS  ROUND  ABOUT  ; 
AND  THERE  STOOD  BEFORE  THEM  SEVENTY  MEN  OF  THE  HOUSE  OF 

ISRAEL, WITH    EVERY    MAN    HIS     CENSER    IN    HIS    HAND;     AND    A 

THICK  CLOUD  OF  INCENSE  WENT  UP.  THEN  SAID  HE  UNTO  ME, 
SON  OF  MAN,  HAST  THOU  SEEN  WHAT  THE  ANCIENTS  OF  THE 
HOUSE  OF  ISRAEL  DO  IN  THE  DARK,  EVERY  MAN  IN  THE  CHAM- 
BERS OF  HIS  IMAGERY? 

To  a  wise  man  there  is  no  surer  mark  of  decline 
in  the  spirit  of  a  people,  than  the  corruption  of  their 
language,  and  the  loss  of  meaning  from  their  highest 
and  most  sacred  words.  In  the  affairs  of  govern- 
ment, of  morals,  of  divinity,  we  retain  the  phrases 
used  by  our  forefathers  in  Shakespeare's  time;  but  it 
is  impossible  to  notice  the  dwindled  thought  which 
they  frequently  contain,  without  feeling  that  the 
currency  struck  for  the  commerce  of  giant  souls  has 
been  clipped  to  serve  the  traffic  of  dwarfs.  Observe, 
for  example,  the  lowered  meaning  of  the  word  RE- 
LIGION. If  you  ask,  in  these  days,  what  a  man's 
religion  is,  you  are  told  something  about  the  place 
he  goes  to  on  a  Sunday,  or  the  preacher  he  objects  to 
least ;  of  his  likings  and  dislikings,  his  habits  and 
opinions,  his  conventional  professions.  But  who, 


286  WHEEE     IS     IHY    GOD  ? 

from  all  this,  would  draw  any  inference  as  to   his 
character  ?     You  know,  where  to  find  him,  and  how 
he  looks ;  but  have  obtained  no  insight  into  what  he 
is.     Yet  can  it  be  doubted  that  if  we  knew  his  reli- 
gion in  the  true  and  ancient  sense,  we  should  under- 
stand him  perfectly?  —  should  see  him  as  God  alone 
can  see  him  now,  stripped  of  the  disguises  that  hide 
him  even  from  himself,  and  with  the  vital  pulse  itself 
of  thought  and  act  laid  bare  to  view  ?     The  divine 
Omniscience,  in  relation  to  our  nature,  may  be  said 
to  consist  in  nothing  else  than  a  discernment  of  our 
several   religions.     Not  indeed  that   in    his   infinite 
Reason  he  knows  anything  about  Churchmen,  and 
Methodists,  and  Quakers ;  or  distinguishes  the  silent 
meeting  from  the  organ's-  pomp ;  or  takes  account  of 
vestments  black  or  white.     These  things  only  denote 
what  a  man  will  call  himself  when  he  is  asked:  they 
refer,  even  when  most  sincere,  to  nothing  that  has 
necessarily  any  deep  seat  within  the  character;  only 
to  certain  emblems,  either  in  conception  or  in  out- 
ward habit,  adopted  for  the  expression  of  affections 
the  most  various  in  direction   and  intensity.      But 
whoever  can  so  look  into  my  heart  as  to  tell  whether 
there  is  anything-  which  I  revere;  and,  if  there  be, 
what  thing  it   is ;    he   may   read   me   through   and 
through,  and  there  is  no  darkness  wherein  I  may 
hide  myself.     This  is  the  master-key  to  the  whole 
moral  nature;  what  does  a  man  secretly  admire  and 
worship  ?     What  haunts  him  with  the  deepest  won- 
der?    What  fills  him  with  most  earnest  aspiration? 
What  should  we  overhear  in  the  soliloquies  of  his 
unguarded  mind?     This  it  is  which,  in  the  truth  of 
things,  constitutes  his  religion;  —  this,  which  deter- 
mines his  precise  place  in  the  scale  of  spiritual  ranks ; 


WHERE     IS     THY    GOD  ?  287 

— this,  which  allies  him  to  Hell  or  Heaven;  —  this, 
which  makes  him  the  outcast  or  the  accepted  of  the 
moral  sentiments  of  the  Holiest.     Every  man's  high- 
est, nameless  though  it  be,  is  his  'living-  God: '  while, 
oftener  than  we   can    tell,  the   being  on  whom    he 
seems  to  call,  whose  history  he  learned  in  the  cate- 
chism, of  whom  he  hears  at  church,  —  with  open  ear 
perhaps,  but  with  thick  deaf  soul,  —  is  his  dead  God. 
It  is  the  former  of  these  that  gives  me  his  genuine 
characteristic:  that  uppermost  term  in  his  mind  dis- 
closes all  the  rest.     Lift  me  the  veil  that  hides  the 
penetralia  of  his  worship,  let  me  see  the  genuflexions 
of  his  spirit,  and  catch  the  whiff  of  his  incense,  and 
look  in  the  face  the  image  at  whose  feet  he  is  pros- 
trate; and  thenceforth   I   know  him  well;    can  tell 
where  to  find  him  in  the  world ;  and  divine  the  tem- 
per of  his  home.     The  classifications  produced  by 
this  principle  are  not  what  you  will  meet  with  in  any 
'  Sketch  of  all  religions.'     Their  lines  run  across  the 
divisions  of  historical  sects,  wholly  regardless  of  their 
separations ;  but  as  they  are  drawn  by  the  hand  of 
nature   and   of  conscience,  rather   than   by  that  of 
pedants  and  of  bigots,  to  study  them  is  to  gain  in- 
sight into  divine  truth,  instead  of  wandering  through 
the  catalogue  of  human  errors.  Let  us  endeavor  then 
to  distinguish  between  real  and  pretended  religion, 
by  adverting  to  the  several  chief  aims  that  manifestly 
preside  over  human  life. 

Of  many  a  man  you  would  never  hesitate  to  say, 
that  his  chief  aim  was  to  obtain  ease,  or  wealth,  or 
dignity.  These  are  the  objects  manifestly  in  front  of 
him,  and,  like  some  huge  magnetic  mass,  drawing  his 
whole  nature  towards  them.  The  fact  is  apparent, 
not  altogether  from  the  amount  of  time  which  he 


288  WHERE     IS     THY    GOD  ? 

devotes  to  them;  for  often  the  thing  dearest  and  most 
sacred  to  the  heart  may  fill  the  fewest  moments,  and, 
though  pervading  the  whole  spirit,  may  scarcely  touch 
the  matter,  of  our  days;  nor  even  from  the  topics  of 
his  talk ;  for  there  are  those  who,  in  conversation, 
seek  rather  to  learn  what  is  most  foreign  to  them, 
than  to  speak  what  is  most  native ;  but  from  cer- 
tain slight  though  expressive  symptoms,  hard  to 
describe  in  detail,  yet  not  easily  missed  in  their  com- 
bination. The  engagements  to  which  he  takes  with 
the  heartiest  relish,  the  sentiments  that  raise  his 
quickest  response,  the  occasions  that  visibly  call  him 
out  and  shake  him  free,  the  moments  of  his  brighten- 
ing eye,  and  genial  laugh,  and  flowing  voice,  leave 
on  us  an  irresistible  impression  of  his  sincerest  taste  s 
and  deepest  desires.  And  above  all,  does  he  reveal 
these,  when  we  discover  the  persons  who  most  oc- 
cupy his  thoughts ;  in  whom  he  sees  what  he  would 
like  to  be  or  to  appear,  and  whose  lot  or  life  he  feels 
it  would  be  an  ascent  to  gain.  Judged  by  signs  in- 
fallible as  these,  how  many  are  there,  surrendered  to 
a  low  Epicurean  life!  —  who  know  no  higher  end 
than  to  be  comfortable  or  renowned !  —  whose  care  is 
for  what  they  may  have,  and  not  for  what  they  might 
be!  If  they  achieve  any  real  work,  it  is  only  that 
they  may  reach  its  end  and  take  their  ease.  If  they 
do  a  deed  of  public  justice,  it  is  as  much  due  to  the 
publicity  as  to  the  justice.  If  they  are  detected  in  a 
charity,  it  is  with  the  smallest  possible  mercy  of  heart, 
and  is  performed  as  a  slothful  riddance  of  uneasiness, 
or  a  creditable  compliance  with  convention.  If  they 
pray  not  to  be  led  into  temptation,  it  is  only  the 
temptation  to  imprudence  and  social  mistake ;  if  to 
be  delivered  from  evil,  it  is  but  the  evil  of  trouble  or 


WHERE    IS    THY    GOD  ?  289 

derision.  To  make  the  largest  use  of  men,  rendering 
back  the  smallest  amount  of  service,  to  reap  the 
greatest  crop  from  the  present,  and  drop  the  scantiest 
seeds  for  the  future,  is  their  true  problem  of  exist- 
ence. They  never  rush  on  toil  and  struggle  that 
bring  no  price ;  or  stretch  their  reason  till  it  aches  in 
search  of  truth ;  or  crucify  their  affections  in  redemp- 
tion of  human  wrongs  ;  or  spend  their  reputation  and 
their  strength  in  rousing  the  public  conscience  from 
its  sleep.  Their  whole  faculties  are  apprenticed  to 
themselves.  Unconscious  of  a  heaven  above  them 
and  around,  they  live  and  die  on  principles  purely 
mercantile;  and  the  book  of  life  must  be  a  common 
ledger,  if  their  names  are  written  on  its  page. 

It  is  needless  at  present  to  settle  the  comparative 
rank  of  these  three  seducing  aims ;  else  we  might  de- 
cide, perhaps,  that,  as  a  primary  object  of  pursuit, 
ease  is  more  ignoble,  and  reputation  less,  than  wealth, 
which  excites  the  more  prevailing  desire.  The  great 
thing  to  be  observed  is  common  to  them  all.  They 
do  not  carry  a  man  out  of  himself,  or  show  him  any- 
thing higher.  He  is  the  centre  in  which  they  all  ter- 
minate ;  he  spins  upon  his  own  axis  in  the  dark,  in- 
effectually shaping  and  rounding  his  particular  world, 
but  wheeling  round  no  glorious  orb,  feeling  no  celes- 
tial light,  flushed  with  no  colors  of  morn  and  eve,  and 
barren  of  seasonal  foliage  and  fruit.  What  is  his 
habitual  day-dream?  What  the  conception  that 
moves  before  him  in  secret  vision,  and  strives  for 
realization  ?  Is  it  the  thought  of  the  heroes  and  the 
saints  of  history?  or  of  friends  at  his  right  hand, 
whose  nobler  spirits  shame  his  weakness  ?  Is  it  not 
simply  the  image  of  himself  easy,  himself  rich,  himself 
grand  and  famous  ?  This  one  corrupting  picture  is 
25 


290  WHERE     IS    THY    GOD  ? 

the  substitute  in  him  for  the  whole  pantheon  of  great 
souls ;  for  sages,  prophets,  martyrs,  and  whatever  of 
beauty  and  sanctity  has  ever  dwelt  in  earth  or 
heaven.  His  whole  system  of  desires  is  mere  per- 
sonal greed:  he  stands  upon  his  own  flat,  without  an 
aspiration.  Nothing  has  a  divine  right  to  him,  but 
he  has  a  human  appetite  for  all  things.  He  wor- 
ships nothing;  he  serves  nothing.  If  God  were  away 
and  heaven  were  not,  it  would  make  no  difference  to 
him ;  he  would  never  miss  them.  His  life  is  Godless ; 
he  is  an  Atheist. 

This,  in  fact,  is  the  strict  and  proper  meaning  of 
the  word  Atheism  ;   the  absence  from  a  man's  mind 
of  any  object  of  worship ;  so  that  he  is  left  with  noth- 
ing above  him,  and  lives  wholly  to  himself.     Hence 
this   term,   though   often    applied   unjustly   to    very 
different  states  of  mind,  is  properly  one  of  odium  ;  for 
it  is  impossible  to  contemplate  such  a  condition  of 
character  without  strong  aversion;  or  to  conceive  of 
its  production  without  a  large  operation  of  moral  and 
voluntary  causes.     We   may  observe,  too,  that  the 
effects  of  this  irreligion  are  as  disorganizing  in  so- 
ciety, as  they   are   debasing  to   the  individual.     It 
wholly  dissolves  the  great  tie  which  binds  men  to- 
gether, and  is  alone  capable  of  forming  them  into  a 
fraternity,  —  the  sentiment  of  mutual  reverence.     Do 
you  say,  that  among  the  servants  of  Wealth  or  of 
Fame  also  this  sentiment  has  place,  because  he  who 
has  little  is  found  to  admire  him  who  has  more,  and 
to  wait  upon  him  with  vast  humility?     He  does  no 
such  thing.     He  admires  the  lot,  but  cares  nothing 
for  the  man;  and  this  combination  of  positive  and 
negative  feelings, —  aspiration   after   another's  state 
without  any  love  for  the  person  in  it, — is  not  honor, 


WHERE    IS     THY    GOD?  291 

but  simply  envy.     As  for  the  so-called  humility  of  the 
poor  menial  in  this  career,  in   the    presence  of  his 
worldly  superior,  the  quality  has  no  right  to  a  moral, 
much  less  to  a  Christian   name.     It  is  mere  unmanli- 
ness  arising  from  the  failure  of  self-respect  as  well  as 
of  mutual  reverence:   human   attributes   are  wholly 
emptied  out  of  the  relation,  and  human  possessions 
alone  remain  to  look  one  another  in  the  face;  and  the 
men,  losing  all  higher  significance,  are  left  in  each 
other's  presence,  as  two  degrees   of  comparison   in 
the  vocabulary  of  Mammon.     Nay,  in  many  a  one, 
this  seeming  subserviency  is  even  worse ;   it  is  an 
admiration  of  himself  as  he  is  to  be,  and  no  less  full 
of  pride  than  it  is  of  meanness.     To  confound  this 
servility  with  the  lowly   dignity    of  worship,   is  to 
mistake  the  slouch  of  pauperism  touching  the  hat, 
with  the  uplifted  look  of  Mary  sitting  at  the  feet. 
And  what  kind  of  community  would  that  be,  whose 
moral  composition  was  from  these  two  elements,  uni- 
versal  self-seeking,   and    general   dearth   of   mutual 
reverence  ?     Go  to  the  heart  of  the  matter,  and  every 
man  would  be  a  centre  of  repulsion,  held  to  his  par- 
ticular sphere  of  human  atoms  by  an  external  frame- 
work of  precarious  interests ;  instead   of  taking  his 
place  in  a  system  of  natural  attractions,  which  would 
endure  though  the  world  itself  were  to  sink  away. 

Beyond  this  stage  of  character,  which  I  have  de- 
scribed by  the  word  Atheism,  the  smallest  step  intro- 
duces us  to  some  form  of  religion.  There  is  no 
further  condition  of  mind,  that  is  not  marked  by  the 
consciousness  of  something'  spiritually  higher;  some- 
thing that  has  divine  right  over  us ;  something  there- 
fore which,  to  say  the  least,  stands  for  us  in  the  place 
of  God.  Still,  ere  we  reach  the  limit  of  pure  and 


292  WHEEE    IS     THY    GOD  ? 

perfect  religion,  which  is  that  of  Christ,  there  is  an 
ample  range  of  error  and  imperfection,  which  may  be 
designated  by  the  general  name  of  Idolatry.  This 
offence  against  truth  is  far  from  being  an  obsolete 
historical  affair,  that  is  gone  out  with  the  Old  Tes- 
tament, and  of  no  concern  except  to  missionaries  now. 
It  abounds  (taking  the  strictest  and  most  philosophic 
meaning  of  the  term)  in  every  Christian  land,  and 
every  Christian  sect;  though  it  certainly  constitutes 
a  partial  apostasy  from  the  true  faith  of  Christendom. 
To  make  this  plain,  let  me  ask  you  to  reflect,  what  is 
the  real  essence  of  Idolatry,  and  how  we  are  to  dis- 
tinguish it  from  pure  religion. 

Some  will  affirm,  that  true  worship  addresses  itself 
direct  to  the  living  God  himself;  appearing  before 
him  face  to  face,  and  discerning  him  as  he  is  in  his 
own  nature ;  while  idolatry  interposes,  before  the  eye 
of  the  body  or  the  mind,  some  image,  which  is  not 
God,  but  only  represents  him. 

It  is,  however,  impossible  to  rest  the  distinction 
thus,  upon  the  absence  of  symbol  in  one  case,  and  its 
presence  in  the  other;  for  it  is  equally  found  in  both, 
and  is  wholly  indispensable  to  religion  itself.  On 
these  terms,  we  should  all  (not  men  alone,  but  angels 
too)  be  idolaters  alike.  For  God,  being  infinite,  can 
never  be  fully  comprehended  by  our  minds ;  whatever 
thought  of  him  be  there,  his  real  nature  must  still 
transcend ;  there  will  yet  be  deep  after  deep  beyond, 
within  that  light  ineffable;  and  what  we  see,  com- 
pared with  what  we  do  not  see,  will  be  as  the  rain- 
drop to  the  firmament.  Our  conception  of  him  can 
never  correspond  with  the  reality,  so  as  to  be  without 
omission,  disproportion,  or  aberration ;  but  can  only 
represent  the  reality,  and  stand  for  God  within  our 


WHERE    IS    THY    GOD  ?  293 

souls,  till  nobler  thoughts  arise  and  reveal  themselves 
as  his  interpreters.  And  this  is  precisely  what  we 
mean  by  a  symbolical  idea.  The  devotee,  who  pros- 
trates himself  before  a  black  stone ;  the  Egyptian, 
who  in  his  prayers  was  haunted  by  the  ideal  form  of 
the  graceful  ibis  or  the  monstrous  sphinx  ;  the  Theist, 
who  bends  beneath  the  starry  porch  that  midnight 
opens  to  the  temple  of  the  universe ;  the  Christian, 
who  seesjn  heaven  a  spirit  akin  to  that  which  divinely 
lived  in  Galilee,  and  with  glorious  pity  died  on  Cal- 
vary ;  —  all  alike  assume  a  representation  of  Him 
whose  immeasurable  nature  they  can  neither  compass 
nor  escape.  And  the  only  question  is,  whether  the 
conception  they  portray  upon  the  wall  of  their  ideal 
temple,  is  an  abominable  idol,  or  a  true  and  sanctify- 
ing mediatorial  thought. 

Others,  who  admit  the  necessity  of  representative 
ideas  in  Religion,  will  say  that  idolatry  consists  in 
making  the  symbol  visible,  while  true  Religion  leaves 
it  mental  and  invisible. 

Yet  it  could  hardly  be  deemed  impossible  for  a 
blind  man  to  be  an  idolater;  superstition  and  sin 
are  not  to  be  escaped  through  mere  physical  priva- 
tion. And  if  an  image  present  to  the  mind's  eye 
alone,  suffices  to  constitute  an  idol,  then  nothing 
remains  for  true  religion,  but  to  think  in  mere  ab- 
stractions; to  worship,  not  a  thinking,  ruling,  loving, 
holy  Being-,  but  Thought,  and  Power,  and  Love,  and 
Holiness  themselves ;  to  adore,  not  a  divine  Architect 
of  creation,  but  the  bare  Skill  itself  of  the  architec- 
ture ;  to  avoid  all  approach  to  impersonation  of  divine 
attributes,  and  to  fly,  as  from  a  sin,  before  the  up- 
rising of  a  concrete  and  a  living  God.  Yet,  I  need 
not  say,  this  is  an  impossible  and  untenable  state  of 
25* 


294  WHERE    IS    THY    GOD  ? 

mind ;  the  aim  at  it  is  that  which  constitutes  a  life- 
less Pantheism  ;  and  the  mere  poetical  contemplation 
of  nature  does  not  deepen  into  the  adoring  service 
of  God,  till  we  feel  creation  and  life  to  be  at  the 
disposal  of  a  present  Mind,  a  personal  and  moral 
Will,  with  absolute  love  of  good  and  perfect  abhor- 
rence of  evil,  with  distinct  and  self-directing  activity, 
to  which  the  laws,  the  order,  the  beauty,  the  scale, 
the  progression,  the  issues  of  all  things,  are  devoutly 
referred.  And  wherever  such  a  faith  exists,  there  is 
a  conception  in  the  mind,  as  truly  representative 
and  as  little  restrained  within  the  limits  of  abstract 
thought,  as  the  notion  we  may  entertain  of  a  char- 
acter in  history  whom  we  have  never  seen,  or  of  an 
angel  in  heaven  whom  we  cannot  see.  There  is  no 
one  even,  through  whose  prayers  and  meditations 
transient  lights  of  beauty  and  floating  fringes  of 
imagery  will  not  be  found  to  pass ;  nor  is  it  in  mortal 
thought  otherwise  to  realize  the  majesty,  the  purity, 
the  constancy,  the  tenderness  of  God. 

The  genuine  characteristic  of  all  Idolatry,  then, 
can  only  be  found  in  this  ;  that  the  symbol  it  adopts 
in  worship  is  a  false  and  needlessly  partial  represen- 
tation of  the  divine  nature ;  while  pure  Religion 
holds  to  one  which  is  true  and  perfect,  wanting  of 
the  reality,  not  in  the  quality  of  its  spirit,  but  only  in 
the  scale  of  its  dimensions.  Our  minds  are  so  ill- 
proportioned,  and  through  ignorance  and  evil  violate 
so  much  the  proper  symmetry  of  a  spiritual  nature, 
that,  left  to  their  own  wilful  ways,  they  misrepresent 
to  us  the  true  essence  of  perfection  ;  and  many  an 
image  does  our  adoring  fancy  grave,  and  then  obey, 
which  cannot  innocently  stand  in  the  place  of  God, 
and  supplants  a  worship  of  diviner  right.  Thus,  there 


\VHEEE    IS    THY    GOD?  295 

is  the  Philosopher'1 's  idol,  shaped  and  set  up  by  Intel- 
lect unsanctified  of  conscience.  To  this  is  attracted 
an  exclusive  reverence  for  Wisdom,  Thought,  and 
Skill ;  the  votary  has  learned  how  little  is  all  he 
knows,  and  stands  with  serene  aspiration  before 
the  presence  of  Infinite  Reason ;  unconscious,  mean- 
while, of  his  children  neglected  at  his  feet,  and  the 
cries  of  humanity  bleeding  near  him  in  the  dust. 
There  is  the  Artist's  idol,  portrayed  upon  the  wall  of 
nature  with  the  pencil  of  beauty,  and  reflecting  a 
flush  of  loveliness  over  heaven  and  earth.  Many  a 
glorious  soul  has  bowed  down  before  this,  and  been 
inspired  by  it  to  do  great  and  wondrous  things  ;  yet 
how  often  betrayed  at  the  same  time  into  passionate 
license,  and  mean  peevishness !  There  is  the  Stoic's 
idol,  chiselled,  by  austere  conscience,  from  the  granitic 
masses  of  spiritual  strength,  and  worshipped  as  the 
image  of  divine  Justice,  Majesty,  and  Holiness.  This 
has  won  and  held  captive  the  noblest  spirits  that  are 
not  wholly  Christian,  and  glorified  them  to  a  manli- 
ness approaching  something  divine ;  yet  wanting  still 
the  mellowing  of  pity,  and  the  grace  of  sweet  and 
glad  affections.  And  there  is  the  Woman's  idol,  with 
Madonna  look,  captivating  to  gentler  minds ;  em- 
bodying and  awakening  the  reverence  for  Mercy  and 
disinterested  Love ;  and,  by  omission,  enfeebling  the 
severe  healthfulness  of  duty,  and  merging  the  strug- 
gling heroism  of  this  life  in  the  glorified  saintship  of 
another.  All  these  are  but  delusive  impersonations 
of  separated  attributes  of  God ;  of  his  Intellect ;  his 
creative  Thought;  his  Will;  his  Affectionateness. 
They  are  mutilated  representations  of  his  nature ; 
idols  of  the  worshipper's  heart,  the  serving  of  which 
will  rather  confirm  and  exaggerate,  than  remedy,  the 


296  WHEEE    IS    THY    GOD? 

defective  proportions  of  his  soul ;  elevating  him  in- 
deed above  himself,  but  still  leaving  him  below  his 
powers. 

Nor  is  there  any  security  against  this  devotion  to 
idols  of  the  mind,  except  that  which  Heaven  itself 
hath  furnished  to  all  Christendom  ;  the  reverential 
acceptance  of  Christ  as  the  highest  Image  of  the 
invisible  God,  the  complete  and  finished  representa- 
tion of  his  moral  perfections.  Here,  nothing  is 
exuberant,  nothing  deficient ;  but  there  prevails  a 
harmony  of  spirit  absolute  and  divine.  In  the  Eter- 
nal Providence  that  rules  us,  reason  can  conceive, 
conscience  can  demand,  affection  can  discern,  nothing 
which  has  not  its  expression  in  the  author  and  per- 
fecter  of  faith.  In  worshipping  the  combination  of 
attributes,  through  which  he  has  shown  us  the 
Father,  there  can  be  no  fear  that  any  duty  will  be 
forgotten,  any  taste  corrupted,  any  aspiration  laid 
asleep.  Drawn  upward  by  such  an  object,  nothing 
in  us  can  remain  low  and  weak  ;  the  simplicity  of 
the  child,  the  strength  of  the  man,  the  love  of  the 
woman,  the  thought  of  the  sage,  the  courage  of  the 
martyr,  the  elevation  of  the  saint,  the  purity  of  the 
angel,  press  and  strive  to  unite  and  realize  themselves 
within  our  souls.  Standing  before  a  God,  of  whose 
Mind  the  universe,  of  whose  Spirit  the  Man  of  Naz- 
areth is  the  accepted  symbol,  we  must  become,  in 
proportion  to  the  sincerity  and  depth  of  our  devo- 
tion, transfigured  with  the  divinest  glory  of  reason 
and  affection,  that  can  rest  upon  a  nature  like  ours  ; 
and  raised  to  a  comprehension  of  that '  love  of  Christ 
which  passeth  knowledge,'  our  souls  must  not  only 
attain  a  fairer  proportion,  but  expand  also  to  nobler 
dimensions,  as  they  become  'filled  with  the  fulness 
of  God.' 


WHERE    IS    THY    GOD  ?  297 

Thus,  '  to  as  many  as  receive  him,'  does  Christ 
'  give  power  to  become  sons  of  God.'  By  such  wor- 
ship is  the  nature  of  the  individual  disciple  glorified. 
And  what  is  true  of  a  single  mind,  is  no  less  true  of 
communities  of  men.  They  also  have  their  atheisms, 
and  their  several  idolatries  ;  from  which  too  they  can 
be  recalled  and  preserved  only  in  proportion  as  they 
find  their  principle  of  combination,  and  their  mode  of 
action,  in  the  deep  love  and  reverence  of  the  perfect- 
ness  of  Christ.  No  age,  since  the  reformation,  has 
been  so  marked  by  idol-worship  as  our  own ;  —  so 
prolific  of  favorite  and  one-sided  schemes  of  social 
improvement,  founded  on  the  sense  of  some  solitary 
want  of  human  nature,  but  barren  of  good  from  neg- 
lect of  all  the  rest.  Our  Christianity  is  no  longer 
Catholic,  rich  in  provisions  for  the  whole  faculties  and 
being  of  man.  With  the  expansion  and  complication 
of  our  life,  religion  has  lost  its  comprehensive  grasp 
of  all  the  elements  of  our  well-being,  and  permitted 
them  to  escape  and  break  up  in  mischievous  analysis, 
and  consign  themselves  to  separate  trusts.  In  an- 
swer to  the  earnest  cry  of  society,  '  What  shall  we 
do  to  be  saved  from  all  our  miseries  and  sins  ? '  there 
are  countless  fragmentary  answers,  in  place  of  the 
deep,  full  harmony  of  response,  from  the  soul  of 
Christian  inspiration.  <  Give  us  more  bread,'  says 
one ;  '  more  money,'  says  a  second ;  '  more  churches, 
more  belief,  more  priests,'  say  others  in  their  turn ; 
and  not  the  least  intelligent  and  worthy  will  exclaim 
for  the  diminution  of  distilleries,  or  the  multiplication 
of  schools.  For  my  own  part,  I  believe  that  human 
nature  is  not  like  a  house,  which  you  may  build  up 
piecemeal,  —  first  the  stone,  then  the  wood,  —  to  its 
true  finish  and  proportion  ;  but,  rather,  like  the  lily  or 


298  WHERE    IS    THY    GOD  ? 

the  tree,  which  grow  in  all  parts,  —  the  stem,  the  root, 
the  leaf, —  at  once,  and  keep~a  constant  symmetry. 
It  must  be  nourished  and  unfolded  simultaneously  in 
all  its  dimensions,  or  its  enlargement  is  mere  distor- 
tion and  disease.  There  is  truth  with  those  who  idol- 
ize the  physical  means  of  augmenting  the  comforts  of 
the  people ;  but  it  is  only  the  truth  which  lurked  in 
the  foul  ^Egyptian  adoration  of  the  prolific  powers  of 
nature.  There  is  truth  with  those  who  trust  in  the 
ameliorating  energy  of  knowledge  and  of  art ;  but  it 
is  the  truth  which  filled  Athens  with  the  worship  of 
the  wise  Minerva,  and  which  left  it  still,  in  the 
estimate  of  the  Christian  apostle, '  in  all  things  too 
superstitious.'  There  is  truth  with  those  who  say  we 
want  more  faith  and  devout  obedience ;  but  if  the 
temple  of  our  life  be  denied  the  light  of  Thought, 
then,  though  every  man  stands,  saint-like,  with  his 
censer  in  his  hand,  he  will  just  repeat  '  what  the 
elders  of  Israel  did  in  the  dark,'  —  send  up  his  foolish 
cloud  of  incense  before  '  creeping  things  and  abomi- 
nable beasts.'  Society,  to  avoid  corruption  in  any  of 
these  agencies,  must  concurrently  avail  itself  of  all. 
And  there  is.  no  power,  which  embraces  them  all,  and 
assigns  to  each  its  proper  rank,  except  that  divine  re- 
ligion which  makes  Christ  the  model  and  the  end  of 
life.  Trusting  to  inferior  forces,  we  shall  find  that 
each  is  blind  to  all  that  lies  above  it,  and  provides 
for  the  world  only  up  to  his  own  level.  But  Chris- 
tian faith,  in  aiming  at  once  at  the  highest  elements 
of  good,  necessarily  includes  the  lowest ;  it  contains 
within  itself  an  epitome  of  all  the  parts  of  human 
perfection  ;  and  in  the  heart  of  a  nation,  as  of  a  man, 
it  is  the  grand  source  of  moral  salubrity  and  inextin- 
guishable hope.  In  proportion  as  they  have  receded 


WHERE    IS    THY    GOD  ?  299 

from  this,  have  States  and  generations  slipped  into 
thraldom  to  partial  theories  and  unworthy  aims ;  and 
in  the  devouring  haste  of  gain,  or  the  mad  passion  for 
war,  or  the  blindness  of  mutual  distrust,  have  brought 
down  the  weighty  penalties  by  which  Heaven  recalls 
society  from  its  unfaithfulness.  But  while  the  image 
of  Christ  remains  as  the  central  and  holy  light  of 
every  home,  the  moral  delusions  that  waste  a  peo- 
ple's strength  can  find  no  place  of  entrance  ;  and 
moderate  desires  in  private  life,  with  a  paramount 
sense  of  justice  in  the  State ;  —  guardianship  over  the 
weak,  with  vigilance  against  the  strong ;  care  of  neg- 
lected childhood,  reverence  for  lingering  age,  and  a 
share  of  the  willing  honor  for  all  men  ;  with  a  hearty 
homage  to  all  truth  as  the  reflected  Light,  and  Duty 
as  the  express  Law  of  God,  must  characterize  and 
consolidate  that  happy  people,  from  whom  no  cloud 
of  idol  incense  yet  hides  the  beauty  of  the  Son  of 
Man. 


XXIV. 

THE    SORROW  WITH  DOWNWARD    LOOK. 

MABKX.  20-22. 

AND  HE  ANSWERED  AND  SAID  UNTO  HIM,  'MASTER,  ALL  THESE  THINGS 
HAVE  I  OBSERVED  FROM  MY  YOUTH.'  THEN  JESUS,  BEHOLDING  HIM, 
LOVED  HIM,  AND  SAID  UNTO  HIM,  '  ONE  THING  THOU  LACKEST  ;  GO 

THY  WAY,  SELL  WHATSOEVER  THOU  HAST,  AND  GIVE  TO  THE  POOR, 
AND  THOU  SHALT  HAVE  TREASURE  IN  HEAVEN  ;  AND  COME,  TAKE 
UP  THE  CROSS,  AND  FOLLOW  ME.'  AND  HE  WAS  SAD  AT  THAT  SAY- 
ING, AND  WENT  AWAY  GRIEVED  ;  FOR  HE  HAD  GREAT  POSSESSIONS. 

WHAT  made  this  young  man  retire  in  sorrow  from 
before  the  face  of  Christ  ?     That  the  demand  made 
upon   him  was  quite  irrational,  all  political  econo- 
mists would  confidentially  assure  him.     That  he  had 
every  reason  to  be  satisfied  with  a  life  so  pure  and 
orderly,  would  be  declared  by  every  worthy  neighbor, 
and  all  judicious  divines.     And  if  he  carried  home 
with  him  any  traces  of  the  sadness  with  which  he 
turned   from   the  eye   of  Jesus,  no    doubt   he   was 
cheered  up,  as  far  as  might  be,  by  the  loving  rebukes 
of  wife  or  friends,  chiding  his  misgivings,  and  laugh- 
ing his  thoughtfulness  away.    If  a  man  who  keeps  all 
the  commandments  may  not  be  happy,  who  may  ? 
With  a  memory  clear  of  reproach  from  the  youth 
up,  whence  can  he  have  drawn  the  cloud  to  shade  so 
innocent  a  soul  ?     All  the  sources  of  inward  care  and 
conflict  seem  to  be  excluded  here ;  and  we  appear  to 
have  the  perfect  representative  of  a  life  at  peace.    To 


THE    SORROAV    WITH    DOWNWARD    LOOK.  301 

say  nothing  of  the  ruler's  property,  which  was  ample 
for  external  comfort,  he  had  fulfilled  the  one  grand 
requisite  of  moral  contentment  and  repose ;  he  had 
established  a  harmony  between  his  perceptions  and 
his  actions,  and  framed  his  mode  of  conduct  by  his 
sentiments  of  right.  Now  there  is,  apparently,  no 
other  condition  of  inward  peace  than  this.  All  men 
feel  the  worth  of  the  spiritual  affections  that  solicit 
them,  and  revere  the  obligation  of  the  better  to  ex- 
clude the  worse.  All  men  feel  also  the  comparative 
strength  of  these  same  affections,  and  find  in  some  a 
power  which  others  ineffectually  dispute.  Wherever 
the  order  of  strength  agrees  exactly  with  the  order  of 
worth ;  and  wherever  the  desire  known  to  be  the 
highest,  is  also  the  most  intense,  and  no  brute  pas- 
sion usurps  the  throne  instead  of  serving  as  the 
footstool ;  wherever  the  habits  are  shaped  and  pro- 
portioned by  the  scale  of  excellence  and  beauty 
within ;  there,  strife  and  sorrow  cannot  be ;  there, 
is  the  glad  consent  between  hand  and  heart,  the 
concord  between  our  worship  and  our  will,  which 
charms  away  the  approach  of  care.  This  harmony 
may  be  obtained  in  either  of  two  ways ;  by  tuning 
up  the  life  to  the  key-note  of  thought ;  or  by  letting 
down  the  thought  to  the  pitch  of  the  actual  life.  He 
who  will  persistently  follow  his  highest  impulses  and 
convictions,  who  will  trust  only  these  amid  noisier 
claims,  and  constrain  himself  to  go  with  them  alike 
in  their  faintness  and  their  might,  shall  not  find  his 
struggle  everlasting;  his  wrestlings  shall  become  fewer 
and  less  terrible  ;  the  hand  of  God,  so  dim  to  him 
and  doubtful  at  the  first,  shall  in  the  end  be  the  only 
thing  that  is  clear  and  sure ;  his  best  shall  be  his 
strongest  too.  But  this,  which  is  a  holy  peace,  is  not 
26 


302  THE    SORKOAV    WITH    DOWNWARD    LOOK. 

the  only  rest  open  to  the  contradictions  of  our  nature. 
There  is  also  an  escape  from  discord,  by  an  inverse 
and  descending  path.  And  if  a  man  will  steadily 
follow  his  strongest  impulses,  without  regard  to  their 
vileness  or  their  worth,  will  give  no  heed  to  any 
whispering  compunction,  will  do  only  and"  always 
what  he  likes;  from  him,  too,  the  jarring  and  conflict 
of  nature  shall  pass  away;  God's  spirit  will  not 
always  strive  with  him,  to  turn  his  wilful  steps ;  the 
angels  that  beset  his  path  with  entreaty,  with  protest, 
with  defiance,  will  thin  off  till  they  are  seen  no  more ;  he 
will  enjoy  a  cheerful  and  comfortable  exemption  from 
anything  divine ;  and,  by  withdrawal  of  all  else,  his 
strongest  affections  will  become  his  best.  So  far  as 
mere  ease  and  pleasure  are  concerned,  there  is  not 
perhaps  much  to  choose  between  these  two  opposite 
modes  of  self-reconciliation.  If  a  man  resolves  to  dis- 
own the  upper  region  of  his  nature,  he  may  find 
entertainment,  if  that  be  all,  in  the  lower ;  and  care 
may  be  made  to  fly  before  the  gas-lamps  and  merri- 
ment of  the  vault,  as  well  as  beneath  the  starlight  of 
the  observatory  and  the  silence  of  the  skies.  The 
difference  is  not  sentient  but  moral ;  between  the  har- 
monies of  the  world  above,  and  the  enchantments  of 
Circe's  isle ;  the  one  a  music  straying  from  the  gate 
of  Heaven,  and  waking  the  soul  to  share  the  vigils  of 
immortals;  the  other,  composing  it  to  sleep  upon  the 
verge  of  hell.  It  was,  however,  in  the  nobler  way  that 
the  young  man  in  the  text  had  established  his  right 
to  an  unanxious  life,  and  attracted  the  love  of  Christ ; 
he  had  conformed  his  habits  to  his  moral  sense,  not 
sunk  his  moral  sense  to  the  level  of  his  habits.  What 
then  had  happened  to  disturb  the  rest  arising  from 
their  concord  ? 


THE    SORROW    WITH    DOWNWARD    LOOK.  303 

The  truth  is,  this  young  ruler  had  had  all  the  con- 
tent that  noble  minds  can  derive  from  the  order  of 
a  well-regulated  life.     He   had  come  to  the  end  of 
all  such  satisfactions,  and   found  them   fairly  spent. 
They  had  become  to  him  mere  negative  conditions  of 
repose,  without  which  indeed  he  would  sink  into  self- 
contempt  ;    but   with   which    he   rose   into   no   self- 
reverence,  and    scarce   escaped    the    haunting   of  a 
perpetual  penitence.     He  felt  that  if  this  were  all,  — 
this,  which  was  but  the  native  path  and  beaten  track 
of  his  soul,  —  the  field  of  duty  was  no  such  glorious 
thing ;    and    some   diviner   terms   might   have   been 
asked,  ere   this   flat   earth    should  win    eternal   life. 
A  store  of  unexhausted  power,  a  pressure  towards 
loftier   aspiration,  led    him    to   fix    an  eager  eye   on 
Christ,  and  be  ready  for  intenser  work  ;   and  to  be 
referred  only  to  the  old  commands,  and  sent  back  to 
the  familiar  task,  spread  the  dull  shade  over  his  heart 
again.    He  had  reached  the  stage  of  character,  which 
all  men,  as  they  are  more  faithful,  the  sooner  reach, 
when  the  conscience  breaks  out  beyond  the  life,  and 
demands  a  sphere  of  enterprise  larger  than  the  home 
domain  w.ith  all  its  settled  ways.     There  is,  there 
can  be,jio  list  of  actions,  no  scheme  of  habits,  that 
will  permanently  represent  your  duty,  and  stand  as  a 
perpetual  diagram  of  right.   Only  while  it  is  yet  unreal- 
ized, while  it  rises  ideally  above  you,  and  reproaches 
your  slurred   and  broken  lines  of  order,  is  it  truly 
the   emblem  of  your   obligations  ;    the  moment  you 
overtake  it,  and  fall  into  coincidence  with  it,  its  func- 
tion is  gone,  and  it  guides  and  teaches  you  no  more ; 
it  becomes  simply  what  you  are,  which  is  always 
parted   by  an  interval  from  what  you  ought  to  be. 
Moral  excellence  is  a  state  of  the  affections,  and  must 


304  THE    SOKBOW    WITH    DOWNWABD    LOOK. 

be  measured  by  their  purity  and  depth  ;  and  in  doing 
merely  what  is  habitual,  the  affections  cannot  keep 
awake ;  they  live  upon  fresh  thoughts,  and  demand 
ever  new  toils ;  their  eye  is  intent  upon  the  future, 
drawn  thither  by  a  holy  light ;  and  if  once  it  retires 
upon  the  present,  it  droops  into  a  fatal  sleep.  Obedi- 
ence to  a  perfect  God  can  be  nothing  less  than  a  ser- 
vice constantly  rendered  by  the  will;  a  voluntary 
effort,  given  largely  and  ungrudgingly  in  proportion 
to  the  gratefulness  and  magnanimity  of  the  soul,  and 
not  therefore  stinted  in  the  angel,  while  it  is  lavished 
in  the  man.  But  from  all  that  is  customary  the  living 
forces  of  the  will  retire  ;  achieving  ease,  it  loses  sanc- 
tity ;  it  is  a  slain  victim,  acceptable  to-day,  unclean 
to-morrow ;  for  God  will  have  at  his  altar  the  very 
breath  and  blood  of  life,  and  not  alone  its  shape  and 
shell. 

And  so  it  is,  that  there  is  something  truly  infinite 
in  duty ;  it  is  a  region  that  can  never  be  inclosed ; 
we  pitch  our  tent  upon  its  boundary  field,  and  as  we 
survey  it,  we  detect  an  ampler  realm  beyond.  As  the 
body  could,  by  no  far  travelling,  find  a  station  where 
the  arm  might  not  yet  be  stretched  forth  ;  so  the  soul 
can  be  borne  by  no  progress  to  a  point  where  the 
freewill  shall  not  take  another  step.  Hence  it  is  evi- 
dent that,  in  the  mind  of  all  responsible  beings,  there 
must  be  a  perpetual  alternation  between  two  opposite 
states,  of  rest  and  unrest,  succeeding  and  reproducing 
each  other.  While  the  moral  conceptions  are  in  clear 
advance  of  the  actions,  there  is  a  secret  shame  which 
forbids  repose  ;  a  sense  of  sorrowful  aspiration  impels 
the  will  to  earnest  effort,  and  sends  it  panting  after 
the  divine  form  that  invites  it  on.  At  length  Faith 
and  Resolution  overtake  the  image ;  the  interval  is 


THE    SORROW    WITH    DOWNWARD    LOOK.  305 

conquered,  and  that  which  was  a  vision  in  the  past 
is  a  reality  of  the  present;  the  outer  and  the  inner 
life  concur;  and  for  awhile  the  healthy  joy  of  a  good 
conscience  touches  the  features  with  its  light.  But, 
in  this  absence  of  moral  confusion,  and  under  the 
shelter  of  a  sacred  peace,  the  energies  of  a  pure 
mind,  released  from  severer  action,  push  forward  to 
the  seizure  of  higher  thoughts.  The  conscience, 
wounded  and  bleeding  no  more,  and  cherished  by 
the  healthful  air  of  God's  approval,  is  sure  to  open 
into  nobler  dimensions.  In  truth,  it  is  the  chief  good 
of  a  well  ordered  structure  of  habits,  that  it  protects 
the  living  soul  within,  frees  it  from  mean  dangers, 
and  gives  it  leave  to  grow.  And  so  the  sentiments 
of  duty  bursts  from  their  confinement,  and  leave  the 
life  again  behind  ;  restoring  the  spirit  to  its  strife,  till 
the  intolerable  chasm  be  traversed  as  before. 

This  systole  and  diastole  of  the  moral  nature  is  as 
truly  needful  to  its  vital  action,  as  the  pulsations  of 
the  heart  to  our  physical  existence.  Only,  their  pe- 
riod is  indefinitely  various,  from  a  moment  to  a  life. 
Some  men  you  may  find,  whose  habits  and  whose 
conscience  settle  down  in  fixed  partnership  for  this 
world,  and  are  never  seen  diverging ;  not,  alas !  from 
the  agility  of  their  habits,  but  from  the  sluggishness 
of  their  conscience.  Their  moral  perceptions  are  ab- 
solutely stationary,  or  show  them  even  less  of  heaven 
in  their  manhood  than  in  their  youth.  Doing  what 
they  think  right,  and  thinking  nothing  right  but  what 
they  do,  they  approve  themselves  and  look  up  to 
nothing.  They  are  not,  however,  exempt  from  the 
great  law  of  alternation  ;  only  its  oscillation  is  dull 
and  slow ;  and  its  sweep  of  rest  having  occupied  this 
life,  its  sorrowful  return  must  begin  another.  In 
26* 


306  THE    SOBROW    WITH    DOWNWARD    LOOK. 

nobler  men,  the  period  of  the  soul  is  quicker;  for 
awhile,  they  fulfil  their  moral  aims,  and  after  con- 
quest enjoy  the  victory  ;  they  pitch  their  tent  upon 
the  field,  and,  not  without  a  glad  thanksgiving,  ac- 
cept a  brief  repose.  But  high  hearts  are  never  long 
without  hearing  some  new  call,  some  distant  clarion 
of  God,  even  in  their  dreams ;  and  soon  they  are 
observed  to  break  up  the  camp  of  ease,  and  start  on 
some  fresh  march  of  faithful  service.  And  to  such 
productive  wills  the  era  of  the  rest,  like  the  Creator's 
sabbath,  is  but  as  a  sixth,  —  and  that  all  filled  with 
hallowed  hours,  —  to  the  working  days  whose  morn- 
ing and  evening  enclose  and  reclaim  some  realm  of 
beauty  out  of  chaos.  And  finally,  looking  higher 
still,  we  find  those  who  never  wait  till  their  moral 
work  accumulates,  and  who  reward  resolution  with 
no  rest ;  with  whom  therefore  the  alternation  is  in- 
stantaneous and  constant ;  who  do  the  good  only  to 
see  the  better,  and  see  the  better  only  to  achieve  it ; 
who  are  too  meek  for  transport,  too  faithful  for  re- 
morse, too  earnest  for  repose ;  whose  worship  is  ac- 
tion, and  whose  action  ceaseless  aspiration. 

This  last  case,  in  which  the  law  of  alternation  has 
its  period  reduced  to  a  vanishing  interval,  fulfils  our 
conception  of  an  angel-mind.  To  higher  natures  it 
belongs  to  have  nothing  discordant,  nothing  inter- 
mittent ;  their  thought  ever  advancing,  their  will 
never  lingering,  the  disturbance  between  them  is 
annihilated  as  fast  as  it  is  created ;  and  with  activity 
more  glorious  than  ours,  they  substitute  for  our 
human  periodicity  a  diviner  constancy.  If,  as  the 
prophet's  dream  proclaims,  there  is  '  no  night'  in  the 
better  world,  the  scene,  unshaded  by  the  darkness, 
unkindled  by  the  blaze  of  day,  is  the  fitting  residence 


THE    SORROW    WITH    DOWNWARD    LOOK.  307 

for  beings  exempt  from  the  ebb  and  flow  of  energy 
and  repose  ;  who  have  no  morning  and  evening  sacri- 
fice, but  from  whose  fragrant  and  fervent  mind  the 
cloud  of  incense  eternally  ascends ;  whose  affections 
send  forth  no  interrupted  anthem,  but  in  ever-living 
harmony  continually  cry,  '  Holy,  Holy,  Holy,  Lord 
God  Almighty,  who  art,  and  wast,  and  art  to  come.' 
This  characteristic  in  our  conception  of  more  heaven- 
ly natures  presents  them  to  us  under  an  aspect  of 
intent,  yet  passionless,  serenity.  We  attribute  to 
them  a  perfect  moral  beauty,  a  godlike  symmetry  of 
goodness,  which  fills  us  with  reverence,  trust,  affec- 
tion, which  draws  from  us  the  sigh  of  hope,  and 
refreshes  us  in  the  weariness  of  our  harsher  life.  But 
we  ascribe  to  them  no  merit ;  we  desire  for  them  no 
reward ;  no  plaudits  burst  from  our  hearts  as  we 
meditate  their  high  career.  As  soon  almost  should 
we  think  of  applauding  the  perfectness  of  God.  A 
spirit  that  undergoes  no  struggle  is  out  of  the  sphere 
of  recompense  ;  being  either  below  the  point  of  noble 
strife,  so  as  not  to  deserve  reward;  or  above,  so  as 
not  to  need  it.  The  perfect  proportion  between 
power  and  perception,  which  we  recognize  in  diviner 
natures,  excludes  all  idea  of  resistance ;  there  is  no 
hesitation  for  volition  to  encounter ;  whatever  is  felt 
to  be  best  is  also  loved  as  dearest,  and  simply  pur- 
sued without  a  rival  in  the  thoughts.  This  entire 
coalescence  of  the  order  of  goodness  and  the  order 
of  desire ;  this  instant  and  spontaneous  adaptation 
of  the  Will  to  the  Conscience  through  every  stage 
of  moral  progression,  distinguishes  our  notion  of 
saintly  excellence,  and  furnishes  our  clearest  image 
of  a  higher  world. 

The  conditions  of  this   world,   however,   are  of  a 


308  THE    SORROW    WITH    DOWNWARD    LOOK. 

lower  and  less  glorious  kind.     We  must  rise  by  suc- 
cessive   stages,   not  by  perennial   flight.     We  have 
always  something  to  overtake ;  and  there  is  a  dis- 
tance but  too  appreciable,  between  what  we  are  and 
what  we  ought  to  be,  —  between  what  we  wish  and 
what  we  reverence.     This  distance  can  be  recovered 
only  by  successive   paroxysms  of  effort,   prolonged 
into  patient  perseverance.     We  cannot  hope  to  be 
released  from  this  demand  upon   our  half-reluctant 
powers,  and  must  hold  ourselves  ready,  with  resolute 
denial,   now   to   lash    and  now   to   cheer  them   on. 
When  we  have  fairly  won  a  point,  and  brought  up 
our  habit  to  our  conscience,  the  penitential  interval, 
destroyed  for  the  moment,  instantly  begins  to  grow 
again.     For,  while  action,  breathless  with  successful 
toil,  sits  down  to  rest,  affection,  which  has  long  been 
there,  is  moving  on.     While  our  moral  love  is  ever 
in  the  future,  our  will  becomes  entangled  in  the  past; 
detained   by  clinging  habits  and  lulled  by  old  con- 
tentments, it  sleeps  upon  its  triumphs  till  it  is  sur- 
prised  by   sudden   foes.     Every    new   perception  of 
good,  every  dawning  upon  us  of  higher  obligations, 
finds  our  active  forces  pledged  and  pre-engaged  to 
some  poorer  work,  from  which  we  have  to  tear  our- 
selves away.     This  it  is  that  makes  ah1  human  faith- 
lessness not  holy  but  strenuous,  and  constitutes  the 
difference  between  the  saint  and  the  hero.     In  pro- 
portion to  the  resistance  which  is  felt,  and  the  effort 
set  up   against  it,  in  proportion   to  the  strength  of 
natural   desire   which    is   put   aside   for  its   inferior 
worth,  is  the  virtue  admitted  to  be  noble  and  heroic ; 
we  praise  it  with  a  glad   and   glorious  heart;  we 
celebrate  it  as  a  triumph  ;  and  cry,  —  what  we  could 
never  say  to  angel  or  to  God,  — (  Well  done!'     The 


THE    SOEKOW    WITH    DOWNWA.KD    LOOK.  309 

sentiment  seems  to  imply  that  the  achievement  is 
something  more  than  could  be  expected.  But  if 
such  crisis  of  conflict  comes  to  ourselves,  we  know 
well  that  it  is  not  in  our  option  to  shrink  from  it 
with  innocence;  that  to  discern  a  moral  good  as 
possible,  is  to  come  under  the  obligation  to  make  it 
real.  And  if  the  effort  is  faithlessly  declined,  there 
inevitably  creeps  upon  us,  first,  an  ignominious  sor- 
row ;  and  next,  a  sadder  and  more  fatal  loss  of  the 
sorrow,  and  of  all  true  worship  of  the  heart. 

This  first  grief  it  was  that  took  the  young  ruler 
with  mournful  steps  away;  and  an  anticipation  of 
the  second  that  led  Jesus  to  look  on  him  with  a 
boundless  pity.  Christ  saw  in  him  the  soul,  which, 
if  it  could  but  be  the  hero,  would  become  the  angel ; 
if  not,  would  sink,  with  many  an  ineffectual  horror, 
into  infinite  depths.  The  man's  early  life  had  en- 
abled him  to  see,  what  was  hidden  from  consciences 
more  confused,  the  divine  perfectness  of  Christ.  The 
chief  value  of  his  good  ways,  of  his  steady  heed  to 
the  commandments,  was  that  it  just  brought  him 
favorably  to  this  very  moment,  and  set  him  with 
open-eyed  perception  before  Messiah's  face.  By  the 
vision  of  so  holy  a  spirit,  as  it  passed  near  him,  he 
had  caught  the  feeling  of  a  higher  life  than  that  of 
well-ordered  habit;  had  been  irresistibly  drawn  to 
put  the  question  so  fatal  to  his  peace  ;  had  heard  his 
own  consciousness  repeated,  and  sent  like  a  bell- 
stroke  to  his  heart,  in  the  deep  words,  '  Yet  lackest 
thou  one  thing;'  yet  withal  he  had  not  strength  to 
follow,  and  went  away  with  the  cloud  settled  on  his 
spirit.  And  once  having  seen  and  refused  a  better 
life,  he  finds  that  the  merely  good  life,  adequate 
before,  has  lost  all  its  sacredness,  Henceforth  it  is 


310  THE    SORROW    WITH    DOWNWARD    LOOK. 

without  a  charm,  and  empty  of  every  inspiration  ; 
and  lies  before  him  with  dead  and  leaden  aspect, 
tinged  with  no  glory,  and  promising  no  heaven.  And 
every  mind  of  imperfect  earnestness  has  to  bear  a 
like  burden  of  sorrow,  —  not  the  Christ-like  sorrow  of 
infinite  aspiration,  chasing  a  good  it  cannot  fully 
overtake,  for  that  is  a  sorrow  with  upward  look, 
piercing  the  heavens  with  a  gaze  of  prayer,  —  but 
the  shameful  sorrow  of  penitent  infirmity,  retreating 
from  the  good  it  has  refused  to  follow ;  a  sorrow 
with  ever  downcast  look,  to  which  the  heavens  are 
hid,  and  the  earth  bereft  of  beauty  and  soiled  with 
common  dust. 

All  men  are  liable  to  this  grievous  experience  ;  for 
all  are  visited  by  gleams  of  something  fairer  and 
more  faithful  than  their  own  lives.  But  those  are 
most  fearfully  exposed  to  it,  who  have  the  dangerous 
yet  glorious  gift  of  high  powers  and  opportunities. 
Had  Christ  never  crossed  the  path  of  that  youth  of 
great  possessions,  his  imagination  would  have  re- 
mained without  its  divinest  picture,  and  his  con- 
science without  its  deadliest  reproach.  Or  had  he 
been  rich  only,  and  not  thoughtful  too,  he  might 
have  passed  that  consecrated  figure  by,  and  felt  no 
shadow  fall  on  his  content.  The  privilege  and  the 
sadness  came  together.  And  those  who  are  haunted 
by  no  visions  of  higher  good,  who  see  only  what  the 
sun  or  moon  may  shine  upon ;  on  whom  no  lifted 
veil  lets  in  the  splendors  so  kindling  to  the  nobler 
Reason,  so  fatal  to  the  feeble  Will,  —  escape  the 
sighs  of  bitterest  regret.  Whoso  is  placed  of  God 
upon  the  loftiest  heights,  is  on  the  verge  of  the  most 
enshadowed  chasms.  The  revelations  of  thought 
and  conscience  are  awful  privileges,  vainly  coveted 


THE    SORKOAV    WITH    DOWNWARD    LOOK.  311 

by  profane  ambition,  and  even  to  the  devout  and 
wise,  safe  only  when  received  with  pure  self-renun- 
ciation. The  richest  lights  that  fall  upon  the  soul 
lie  next  to  the  deepest  tones  of  shade.  Messiah's 
first  gaze  of  divine  affection  on  the  half-earnest  youth 
would  doubtless  send  through  his  heart  a  hopeful 
joy;  but  afterwards,  when  he  had  lapsed  into  the  old 
and  common  self,  that  very  glance  would  become  a 
terrible  remembrance.  And  so  is  it  with  us  all ; 
every  light  of  moral  beauty,  permitted  to  entrance, 
but  not  allowed  to  guide  us,  becomes,  like  the  after- 
image of  the  sun  when  idly  stared  at,  a  dark  speck 
upon  the  soul,  which  follows  us  at  all  our  work, 
adheres  to  every  object,  approaches  and  recedes  in 
dreams,  and  is  neither  evaded  by  movement,  nor 
washed  out  by  tears.  If  the  fairest  gifts  are  not  to 
be  turned  into  haunting  griefs,  it  can  only  be  by 
following  in  the  ways  of  duty  and  denial  along 
which  they  manifestly  lead ;  and,  while  yet  they 
look  upon  us,  like  the  eye  of  Christ,  with  a  sacred 
love,  resolving  on  that  quiet  self-surrender,  which 
shall  meet  their  solemn  claim,  and  prevent  our  ever 
hearing  again  the  words,  '  Yet  lackest  thou  one 
thing.' 


XXV. 

THE    SHADOW    OF    DEATH. 
PHILIPPIANS  i.  21. 

FOE   TO   ME   TO    LITE   IS   CHEIST,    AND   TO   DIE   IS   GAIN. 

IT  is  natural  to  conclude  that  one  who  could  feel 
death  to  be  a  gain,  must  have  had  few  treasures  in 
life  to  lose.  The  sentiment  evidently  belongs  to  a 
heart  that  had  either  outlived  the  objects  of  affection 
and  favorite  pursuit ;  or  else  had  loved  little,  while 
capable  of  loving  much,  and  was  unattached  to  the 
scene  of  human  existence  except  at  its  points  of  duty. 
It  is  perfectly  conceivable  that  a  mind  disengaged  from 
external  realities,  keeping  together  and  entire  its  own 
feelings,  interested  most  profoundly  in  the  abstrac- 
tions of  its  own  faith  and  hope,  may  welcome  the 
transition  to  another  form  of  being,  in  which  it  will 
retain  its  individuality  complete,  and  be  surrounded 
by  new  objects  tempting  it  at  length  to  open  forth. 
He  that  has  no  deep  root  in  this  world,  may  suffer 
transplantation  without  pain.  And  thus  it  was  with 
Paul.  His  ardent  and  generous  soul  had  fastened 
itself  on  no  one  living  object,  but  on  an  abstraction, 
a  thing  of  his  own  mind,  the  truth.  For  half  his  life 
a  wanderer  over  the  earth,  no  place  looked  up  at  him 
with  a  domestic  eye.  Called  as  he  was  into  ever 
new  society,  and  passing  rapidly  through  all  orders 
of  men ;  accustomed  to  study  in  quick  succession 


THE    SHADOW    OF    DEATH.  313 

the  feelings  of  slave  and  philosopher,  of  Jew,  of 
Asiatic,  of  Athenian  and  Roman,  his  personal  sym- 
pathies were  disciplined  to  promptitude  rather  than 
to  profundity.  He  rested  nowhere  long  enough  to 
feel  his  nature  silently  yet  irrevocably  depositing  itself 
there,  but  was  at  all  times  ready  to  gather  up  his 
feelings  and  pass  on.  Christ  and  God,  the  objects 
of  his  most  earnest  love,  were  viewless  and  ideal 
here,  and  would  become  realities  only  when  death 
had  transferred  him  to  the  future.  It  is  true  that  a 
noble  attachment  bound  him  to  his  disciples  ;  but  he 
loved  them,  less  in  their  individual  persons  and  for 
their  own  sakes,  than  as  depositaries  of  the  truth, — 
as  links  of  a  living  chain  of  minds  by  which  that 
truth  would  complete  its  circuit,  and  find  a  passage 
for  its  renovating  power.  Nor  was  there  anything 
in  his  outward  condition  to  which  his  desires  could 
eagerly  cling.  The  world,  as  a  place  of  shelter,  had 
been  spoiled  for  him,  by  the  Gospel ;  his  pure  tastes 
were  revolted,  his  sympathies  stung,  at  every  turn. 
At  Jerusalem,  the  impending  fate  of  friends  and 
country  brooded  on  his  spirit  like  a  cloud  ;  in  Rome, 
the  springs  of  social  enjoyment  were  poisoned  by  the 
penetrating  taint  of  a  voluptuous  polytheism ;  at 
every  table  was  the  altar,  on  every  tongue  the  light 
oath,  of  Idolatry.  In  every  aspect  society  presented 
a  scene,  not  for  rest,  but  for  toil ;  not  to  be  enjoyed, 
but  to  be  reformed.  It  offered  no  place  where  the 
Christian  might  innocently  retreat  within  the  sanctity 
of  a  home ;  but  summoned  him  forth,  in  the  spirit 
of  an  earnest  and  almost  impatient  benevolence,  to 
purchase  by  his  own  good  fight  of  persuasion  and 
of  faith,  a  fuller  purity  and  peace  for  coming  times. 
In  this  noble  conflict,  life  afforded  to  Paul  the  satisfac- 
27 


314  THE    SHADOW    OF    DEATH. 

tions  of  moral  victory ;  but  death  offered  the  per- 
secuted apostle  the  only  prospect  of  personal  release  ; 
from  the  prison  it  would  transfer  him  to  the  skies  ; 
and  the  fetters  would  fall  from  his  hand  in  the  free- 
dom of  immortality. 

That  Paul,  thus  insulated  from  earthly  attachments, 
should  feel  a  deeper  interest  in  the  future  than  in  the 
present,  is  perfectly  natural.     But  when   Christians 
take  up  this  feeling  as  essential  to  every  disciple ; 
when  they  proclaim  it  a  solemn  duty  to  postpone 
every  human  feeling  to  the  attractions  of  the  eternal 
state ;  —  when  they  say,  '  it  is  not  enough  to  take  the 
promises  to  your  heart  as  true  comfort  in  your  sorrow, 
but  even  in  glad  scenes  of  life,  in  youth,  amid  the  ties 
of  nature,  in  the  very  jubilee  of  affections,  you  must 
yearn  towards  Heaven  more  than  to  the  world,  and 
to  feel  that  to  go,  is  far  better  than  to  stay  ; '  —  they 
are  guilty  of  an  insincere  and  mischievous  parody  on 
the  sentiments  of  the  Apostle.     If  we  are  to  believe 
the  rhapsodies  of  a  prevalent  fanaticism,  no  one  has 
any  vital  religion  who  does  not  think  the  world  a 
waste,  and  life  a  burden,  and  all  human  affections 
snares  of  sin  ;  whose  impressions  of  God,  and  emo- 
tions towards  Christ,  do  not  far  transcend  in  their 
intensity  the  love  of  kindred  and  of  men  ;  and  who 
do  not,  in  all  earnest  moments  of  reflection,  sigh  for 
the  hour  which  shall  rescue  them  from  their  mortality. 
If  a  shade  creeps  upon  the  countenance  at  the  con- 
sciousness that  youth  departs,  and  that  the  foot  has 
already   entered  the   declining   path ;   if  we  cannot 
think  of  the  wreck  of  vigor  without  regret,  or  look 
into  a  grave  without  a  sigh ;  if  we  manifest  in  any 
way  that  the  mystery  of  mortality  presses  upon  our 
hearts  to  sadden  them  ;  —  the  only  comfort  that  is  of- 


THE  SHADOW  OF  DEATH.  315 

fered  us  is,  that  we  can  have  no  real  Christianity 
within  us ;  and  since  we  shrink  from  the  thought  of 
death  so  much,  and  yearn  for  Heaven  so  little,  we 
must  expect  the  retribution  that  never  ends.  Even 
those  who  hold  a  creed  more  merciful  than  this,  re- 
gard such  feelings  with  grave  disapprobation,  and 
suppose  them  to  have  their  root  in  distrust  of  Provi- 
dence and  doubts  of  Immortality.  Yet  the  human 
heart  quietly  vindicates  its  own  rights,  and  still  weeps 
for  death  ;  the  last  hour  is  still  felt  to  be  a  trial,  not 
a  joy, —  a  fitting  time  for  resignation  and  meek  trust, 
not  for  transport ;  and,  to  bear  it  well,  is  held  suffi- 
cient proof  of  a  good  and  faithful  hope.  In  spite  of 
the  imagined  eagerness  to  depart  and  be  with  Christ, 
even  the  elect  preserve  their  mortal  life  with  no  less 
care  than  the  unbeliever ;  and  religious  suicides,  in 
impatience  for  an  assured  salvation,  are  crimes  un- 
heard of  yet.  Nor  is  the  funeral  converted  yet  from  a 
scene  of  grief  into  an  ovation.  It  is  obvious  then 
that  in  this  assumption  of  the  Apostolic  sentiment 
there  is  a  latent  insincerity,  —  an  unconscious  self- 
delusion, —  as  indeed  there  always  is,  where  states  of 
feeling  rarely  attainable  are  insisted  on  as  essen- 
tial duties.  Unhappily  this  hollow  and  inflated  reli- 
gion is  far  from  being  a  harmless  self-deception. 
Sarcastic  sagacity  sees  its  emptiness  and  scoffs. 
Minds  affectionate  and  refined  are  revolted  by  a 
faith,  calling  for  the  excision  of  human  affections 
which  are  an  integrant  portion  of  their  life,  and 
scowling  on  that  lofty  melancholy  which  has  been 
often  declared  inseperable  from  superior  natures. 
And  thus  the  profession  of  religion,  in  its  more  ear- 
nest form,  is  apt  to  be  found  in  association  with  the 
cold  heart  that,  caring  little  for  anything  here,  gains 


316  THE  SHADOW  OF  DEATH. 

an  easy  credit  for  sublimer  aspirations  ;  that  reviles  a 
scene  of  existence  to  whose  beauty  it  is  insensible, 
and  plumes  itself  on  freedom  from  human  attach- 
ments, which  it  is  not  noble  enough  to  feel ;  that  has 
no  better  way  of  clothing  the  Heaven  above  with 
glory,  than  by  making  the  earth  below  look  hideous. 
In  order  to  present  some  counteraction  of  conceptions 
so  injurious,  it  may  be  useful  to  define  the  actual 
place  which  the  immortal  hope  should  occupy  in 
our  regards. 

The  true  and  natural  state  of  mind  is  found,  I  ap- 
prehend, when  the  future  of  our  faith  is  less  loved 
than  happy  and  virtuous  existence  on  earth,  but  more 
loved  than  life  here  upon  unfaithful  or  forbidden 
terms  ;^  when,  leaving  unimpaired  our  content  with 
permitted  happiness,  it  brings  the  needful  solace  to 
affliction.  It  matters  not  that  the  realities  of  that 
higher  world  will  doubtless  transcend  our  happiest 
life,  and  the  successive  stages  of  our  being  be  ever 
progressive  in  excellence.  The  reality  can  affect  us 
only  through  our  ideas  of  it ;  and  these  ideas  present 
us  with  so  faint  an  image  of  the  truth,  that  its  vivid- 
ness must  be  surpassed  by  the  warmer  and  nearer 
light  of  our  actual  and  happy  experience. 

The  future  cannot  reasonably  be  expected  to  com- 
pete with  the  present  in  our  desires,  because  our  con- 
ceptions of  it  are  necessarily  nothing  more  than  a 
selection  from  the  present.  The  scenery  of  our  im- 
mortal hope  is  constructed  from  the  scattered  ele- 
ments of  our  mortal  life.  We  borrow  from  memory 
its  peaceful  retrospect,  from  conscience  its  emotions 
of  satisfied  duty,  from  reason  its  delighted  percep- 
tions of  truth,  from  affection  and  faith,  the  repose  of 
human  sympathy,  and  the  glow  of  diviner  aspiration  ; 


THE    SHADOW    OF    DEATH.  317 

and,  combining  all  into  one  full  thought  glorified  by 
the  element  of  eternity,  we  see  before  us  the  future  of 
our  hopes.     Whatever  other  resources  the  great  real- 
ity may  contain,  whatever  impenetrable  mysteries  lie 
within  the  ample  folds  of  its  duration,  must  be  in- 
operative on  us,  because  not  present  to  our  minds. 
We  look  therefore  at  earth  as  comprising  all  the  good 
which  we  have  ever  experienced;  we  look  at  heaven 
as  repeating  some.     And  though  in  words  we  may  be 
assured  of  the  superior  intensity  of  the  latter,  in  thought 
we  can  but  dwell  on  it  as  it  has  been  felt ;  —  he  who 
has  felt  profoundly,  anticipating  vividly  ; —  he  whose 
emotions  are  obtuse,  looking  on  nothing  but  a  blank. 
Nor  does  the  conception  of  immense  duration  prac- 
tically impart  much  brilliancy  to  the  impressions  of 
faith ;  for,  time  is  nothing  to  us,  except  as  it  is  replete 
with  events,  compounded  of  successive  points  of  con- 
sciousness ;  and  we  have  no  adequate  stock  of  con- 
ceptions of  the  futute  wherewith  to  fill  so  mighty  an 
expectancy,  and   people    with    various    interest  the 
vacuity  of  infinite   ages.     The   actual  effect  of  the 
Eternal   hope   is   derived   from   the   imagination   of 
single  passages  of  experience,  —  from  the  instanta- 
neous glance  of  some  moment  of  blessedness  or  awe, 
—  the  smiting  of  a  reproachful  thought,  the  solution 
of  a  sad  perplexity,  —  the  vision  of  a  recovered  friend. 
It  is  not  in  ordinary  human  nature  to  prefer  the  frag- 
mentary happiness  of  heaven,  as  alone  it  can  appear 
before  our  thoughts,  to  the  complete  and  well  known 
satisfactions  of  this  life  in  its  peaceful  attitudes. 

Again,  the  future  is  to  us  an  abstraction,  a  phan- 
tom, a  floating  vision,  which  cannot  reasonably  be 
expected  to  rival  in  interest  the  positive  recollections 
of  the  actual  scene  in  which  we  are  placed.    Sensible 
27* 


318  THE  SHADOW  OF  DEATH. 

impressions,  ideas  of  visible  and  audible  objects,  would 
seem  indispensable  to  the  existence  of  distinct  and 
vivid  conception ;  and  when  they  depart,  and  we  are 
called  to  think  of  events  without  any  scenery ;  of 
emotions  without  utterance ;  of  love  without  a  hand 
to  grasp ;  of  knowledge  without  the  converse  with 
men  and  books,  without  the  real  study  of  light  and 
air  and  water,  and  the  solid  rocks,  and  the  living 
things  of  the  forest  and  the  ocean ;  of  moral  growth 
without  a  known  theatre  of  moral  action ;  —  the 
vision  is  apt  to  flit  away  in  impalpable  and  spectral 
forms.  It  is  not  that  we  derive  our  chief  enjoyment 
from  the  senses ;  but  material  impressions  are  need- 
ful as  the  centres,  the  fixed  points,  round  which  feel- 
ings and  recollections  and  imaginations  cluster,  and 
without  which  they  are  speedily  dissipated.  We  love 
them,  not  on  their  own  account,  but  as  the  shelter 
and  the  shrine  of  sentiments  ineffably  dear.  The 
memories  of  childhood,  —  how  do  they  rush  upon  the 
heart  when  we  revisit  the  very  scenes  in  which  they 
had  their  birth !  One  tone  of  a  bell  whose  summons 
we  were  accustomed  to  obey,  —  the  sight  of  a  field 
where  we  met  the  companions  of  some  favorite  sport, 
—  the  re-entrance  beneath  a  roof  under  which  we 
gathered  with  brothers  and  sisters  around  the  Christ- 
mas fire,  —  how  do  they  do  blessed  violence  to  time, 
and  snatch  us  into  the  past !  How  do  they  make  the 
atmosphere  of  our  thoughts  ring  with  the  merry  shout 
of  playmates,  or  paint  on  the  very  space  before  us  the 
smile  of  some  dear  absent  face,  or  whisper  the  meek 
counsel  of  some  departed  voice !  So  dependent  are 
we  on  such  outward  things,  that  even  slight  changes 
in  the  parts  of  such  a  scene  disturb  us  ;  and  the  dis- 
appearance of  a  building  or  a  tree  seems  to  bereave 


THE  SHADOW  OF  DEATH.  319 

us  of  a  thousand  sympathies.     Long  habit  endears 
even  the  most  homely  familiarities  of  our  existence, 
and  we  cannot  part  with  them  without  a  pang ;  we 
hang  our  thoughts  upon   the  surfaces   of  all  things 
round  us,  —  on  the  walls  of  our  home,  the  hours  of 
the  day,  the  faces  of  neighbors,  the  quiet  country,  or 
the  stir  of  the  town.    And  then,  too,  the  domesticities 
of  life !     Oh  God  !  they  would  be  too  much  for  our 
religion  were  they  not  themselves  in  pure  hearts  a 
very  form  of  that  religion.    If  we  could  all  go  together, 
there  would  be  nothing  in  it ;  but  that  separate  drop- 
ping off,  —  that  departing  one  by  one,  —  that  drift 
from  our  anchorage  alone, — that  thrust  into  a  wid- 
owed heaven, — who  can  deny  it  to  be  a  lonesome 
thing  ?     It  is  mere  ignorance  of  the  human  mind  to 
expect  the  love  of  God  to  overpower  all  this.     Why, 
the  more  we  have  thought  of  him,  —  the  more  we 
have  venerated  and  trusted  him,  —  so  much  the  more 
closely  has  he  too  become  associated  with  the  famil- 
iar scenery  and  companions  of  our  life ;   they  have 
grown  into  his  image  and  interpreters  ;   they  have 
established  themselves  as  the  shrine  of  our  piety,  the 
sanctuary  of  his  spirit,  the  expression  of  his  love ;  and 
when  we  are  torn  from  them,  we  seem  to  retire  to  a 
distance  from  his  shelter.    If  Christ  felt  the  cup  to  be 
bitter,  and  turned  for  a  moment  from  the  draught ;  if 
he  trembled  that  he  shoud  see  no  more  the  towers 
of  Jerusalem,  though  to  see  them  had  drawn  forth 
prophetic  tears  ;  if  he  sorrowed  in  spirit  to  bid  adieu 
to  the  family  of  Bethany,  though  the  tie  was  that  of 
friendship  and  not  of  home;  if  he  hid  his  head  at 
parting  in  the  bosom  of  the  beloved  disciple,  though 
to  Mary  the  mother  that  disciple  was  needful  still ;  if 
he  had  rather  that  the  immortal  spirits  of  the  elder 


THE    SHADOAV    OF    DEATH. 


time  should  come  to  commune  with  him  in  the  famil- 
iar groves  of  Tabor,  than  himself  be  borne  to  them 
he  knew  not  whither ;  if  the  Mount  of  Olives,  his 
favorite  retreat  of  midnight  prayer,  and  the  shore  of 
the  Galilean  Lake,  witness  to  the  musings  and  enter- 
prises of  his  opening  ministry,  and  the  verdant  slopes 
of  Nazareth,  sacred  with  the  memories  of  early  years, 
seemed  to  gaze  in  upon  his  melted  soul  with  a 
beseeching  look  that  he  would  not  go ;  —  may  not 
we,  without  the  reproach  of  impiety  or  the  suspicion 
of  unacknowledged  doubts,  feel  that  to  depart  is  no 
light  struggle,  and  cast  a  lingering  glance  at  the 
friendly  scene  we  quit  ?  It  is  not  the  animal  conflict 
of  death,  the  corporeal  pain  of  an  organization  ceas- 
ing to  be,  —  to  be  much  concerned  about  that  were 
an  unmanly  fear.  It  is  not  any  torturing  apprehen- 
sion about  the  mysterious  future,  any  dread  of  the 
great  secret,  any  questioning  whether  all  will  be  well 
there ;  for  a  good  man  to  be  disturbed  with  such  feel- 
ings, shows  a  morbid  timidity  of  faith,  a  feeble  dis- 
trust of  the  benignity  of  Providence,  with  which  an 
affectionate  piety  will  have  no  sympathy.  It  is  sim- 
ply and  solely  the  adieu  to  things  loved  and  left,  the 
exchange  of  the  familiar  for  the  new,  from  which 
our  hearts  may  be  justified  if  they  recoil.  Doubtless, 
the  time  will  come,  when  successive  strokes  of 
bereavement  have  fallen  upon  our  homes,  for  that 
recoil  to  cease.  When  in  the  sanctuary  of  the  af- 
fections the  lights  are  almost  extinguished,  and  those 
that  remain  only  enable  us  to  read  the  inscriptions  on 
the  multitude  of  surrounding  tombs ;  when,  in  fact, 
the  solitude  would  be,  not  to  depart  but  to  remain  — 
we  may  well  and  naturally  feel  that  it  is  time  to  go, 
and  our  prayer  may  be  speedily  withdrawn  to  the 


THE    SHADOW    OF    DEATH.  321 

place  of  rest.  For  now,  whatever  may  be  the  indis- 
tinctness of  the  future,  the  groups  of  friendship  are 
there  ;  they  make  the  best  part  of  its  scenery  ;  and 
wherever  they  are  is  a  shelter  and  a  home.  How- 
ever strange  to  us  the  colony  may  be  in  which  they 
dwell,  if,  as  we  cross  the  deeps  of  death,  their  vision- 
ary forms  shall  crowd  the  shore,  and  people  the  hills 
of  that  unvisited  abode,  it  will  be  to  us  '  a  better 
country,  even  a  heavenly.' 

There  is  then  a  glow  in  this  world  more  genial  and 
less  faint  than  the  orb  of  everlasting  hope  ;  and  yet  a 
darkness   too,  most   thankful  for  its  mild   and  holy 
beams.     Pale   at  our  mid-day,  it  attains  its  glory  at 
our  noon  of  night;  and  if  it  does  not  light  us  at  our 
work,  lifts  us  when  we  watch  and  pray.     The  proper 
entrance  for  faith  and  hope  lies  between  the  ripeness 
of  blessing  and  the  deepening  of  sadness ;  between 
the  crown  and  the  cross  of  life.     Do  you  think  that 
so  modest  a  place,  for  so  great  an  expectation,  is  inju- 
rious to  the  dignity  of  religion  ?     Perhaps  it  is  in  the 
better  harmony  with  its  humility ;  at  least  it  seems 
not  unsuitable  to  a  mind  which  is  so  grateful  for  the 
present,  as  to  shrink  from  pressing  anxious  claims 
upon  the  future  ;  which  loves  so  well  the  given  world 
of  God,  as  not  often  to  remind  him  of  the  promised 
one.     Were  this  the  only  eclipse  which  the  immortal 
prospect  is  liable  to  suffer,  there  would  be  little  need 
to  lament  the  languor  of  its  light.     That  causes  less 
excusable  also  intercept  its  influence,  is  not  indeed  to 
be  denied ;  but  where  are  we  to  seek  the  remedy  ? 
Shall  we  endeavor  to  loosen  the  affections  from  this 
life,  and  forbid  all  heart-alleigance  towards  a  scene  to 
which  we  are  tempted  so  strongly  to  cling?     Alas! 
we  shall  not  love  Heaven  more  for  loving  earth  less ; 


322  THE  SHADOW  OP  DEATH. 

this  would  be  a  mere  destruction  of  one  set  of  sym- 
pathies, in  no  way  tending  to  the  creation  of  another. 
The  love  of  God  may  even  find  its  root  in  the  love 
of  kindred  ;  and  admiration  of  his  works  and  ways  is 
the  germ  of  adoration  of  himself.  If  it  is  from  the 
blessings  of  the  present  that  we  construct  our  concep- 
tion of  the  future,  to  enfeeble  our  sense  of  these 
blessings  is  to  take  away  the  very  materials  of  faith. 
No ;  the  needful  thing  is  not  that  we  abate,  but  that 
we  consecrate  the  interests  and  affections  of  our  life  ; 
entertain  them  with  a  thoughtful  heart ;  serve  them 
with  the  will  of  duty ;  and  revere  them  as  the  ben- 
ediction of  our  God.  The  same  spirit  which  takes 
the  veil  of  Deity  from  the  present  will  drive  away  the 
clouds  that  overhang  the  future  ;  and  he  that  makes 
his  moments  devout,  shall  not  feel  his  eternity  to  be 
cheerless.  And  as  it  is  the  fascinations  of  affection- 
ate memory  that  hold  us  back,  they  may  be  not  a 
little  counteracted  by  the  creations  of  sacred  hope. 
We  shall  be  less  servilely  detained  among  things 
seen,  when  we  are  less  indolent  in  our  conceptions  of 
things  unseen ;  we  freely  cast  into  them  every  bles- 
sed remembrance,  every  high  pursuit,  every  unan- 
swered aspiration,  every  image  pure  and  dear ;  and 
invest  them  with  the  forms  of  a  divine  and  holy 
beauty.  If  the  particular  good  which  we  imagine 
should  not  arrive,  it  can  only  be  because  God  will 
present  us  with  far  better.  Without  this  free  license 
for  the  creations  of  faith,  I  see  not  how,  while  we 
are  mortals  yet,  Immortality  can  exercise  its  due  at- 
traction upon  our  minds.  To  die,  can  never,  with- 
out an  enthusiasm  which  does  violence  to  reason, 
and  little  credit  to  the  heart,  be  an  act  of  transport ; 
so  low  as  an  act  of  submission  it  need  not  sink ;  for 


THE    SHADOW    OF    DEATH.  323 

that  would  imply  a  belief  that  the  change  from  the 
present  to  the  future  is  for  evil.  It  is  most  fitly  met 
in  the  spirit  of  trust ; —  an  unbroken  belief  that  it  is 
for  the  better,  but  a  feeling  of  reluctance,  which  we 
distrust  and  check,  as  though  it  were  for  the  worse  ; 
a  consciousness  that,  if  we  choose  for  ourselves,  we 
should  remain  where  we  are,  yet  not  a  doubt  of  the 
greater  wisdom  and  goodness  of  God's  choice,  that 
we  should  go.  If  this  spirit  of  humble  faith  be  not 
high-wrought  enough,  may  God  forgive  the  loving 
hearts  that  can  attain  no  better ! 


XXVI 

GREAT  HOPES   FOE   GREAT  SOULS. 
1  CORINTHIANS  xv.  48. 

AS  IS  THE  HEAVENLY,  SUCH  ARE  THEY  ALSO  THAT  ARE  HEAVENLT. 

THE  contempt  with  which  it  is  the  frequent  prac- 
tise of  divines  to  treat  the  grounds  of  natural  reli- 
gion, betrays  an  ignorance  both  of  the  true  office  of 
revelation,  and  of  the  true  wants  of  the  human  heart. 
It  cannot  be  justified  except  on  the  supposition  that 
there  is  some  contradiction  between  the  teachings  of 
creation  and  those  of  Christ,  with  some  decided  pre- 
ponderance of  proof  in  favor  of  the  latter.  Even  if 
the  Gospel  furnished  a  series  of  perfectly  new  truths, 
of  which  nature  had  been  profoundly  silent,  it  would 
be  neither  reasonable  nor  safe  to  fix  exclusive  atten- 
tion on  these  recent  and  historical  acquisitions,  and 
prohibit  all  reference  to  those  elder  oracles  of  God, 
by  which  his  Spirit,  enshrined  in  the  glories  of  his 
universe,  taught  the  fathers  of  our  race.  And  if  it  be 
the  function  of  Christianity  not  to  administer  truth 
entirely  new,  but  to  corroborate  by  fresh  evidence, 
and  invest  with  new  beauty,  and  publish  to  the 
millions  with  a  voice  of  power,  a  faith  latent  already 
in  the  hearts  of  many,  and  scattered  through  the 
speculations  of  the  wise  and  noble  few,  —  to  erect 
into  realities  the  dreams  which  had  visited  a  half- 
inspired  philosophy,  interpreting  the  life  and  lot  of 


GBEAT    HOPES    FOB    GREAT  SOULS.  325 

man  ;  —  then  there  is  a  relation  between  the  religion 
of  nature  and  that  of  Christ,  —  a  relation  of  original 
and  supplement,  —  which  renders  the  one  essential  to 
the  apprehension  of  the  other.  Revelation,  you  say, 
has  given  us  the  clue  by  which  to  thread  the  laby- 
rinth of  creation,  and  extricate  ourselves  from  its  pas- 
sages of  mystery  and  gloom.  Be  it  so ;  still,  there, 
in  the  scene  thus  cleared  of  its  perplexity,  must  our 
worship  be  paid,  and  the  manifestations  of  Deity 
be  sought.  If  the  use  of  revelation  be  to  explain  the 
perplexities  of  Providence  and  life,  it  would  be  a 
strange  use  to  make  of  the  explanation  were  we  to 
turn  away  from  the  thing  explained.  We  hold  the 
key  of  heaven  in  our  hands.  What  folly  to  be  forever 
extolling  and  venerating  it,  whilst  we  prohibit  all  ap- 
proach to  the  temple,  whose  gates  it  is  destined  to 
unlock. 

The  great  doctrine  of  human  immortality  has  re- 
ceived from  Christianity  its  widest  and  noblest  effi- 
cacy ;  has  been  lifted  for  many  a  generation  from  a 
low  point  of  probability  to  the  confines  of  certainty  ; 
and  has  found  in  the  risen  and  ascended  Jesus  an 
answer  to  the  difficulties  which  most  embarrass  the 
faith  and  hope  of  the  human  mind.  But  the  influ- 
ence which  is  most  effectual  in  diffusing  a  truth  in 
the  first  instance,  is  not  always  the  best  for  creating 
the  better  and  later  faith  of  the  reflecting  heart ;  and 
when  the  historical  illustration  is  exhausted  of  some- 
thing of  its  power,  it  may  be  useful  to  the  feelings 
and  imagination  to  dwell  on  considerations,  of  fee- 
bler force,  perhaps,  but  of  nearer  and  deeper  interest. 
Thus  it  is  with  the  natural  indications  of  human  im- 
mortality. Nature  and  life,  our  sins  and  sorrows, 
our  virtues  and  our  peace,  have  on  them  the  traces 
28 


326         GEEAT  HOPES  FOR  GREAT  SOULS. 

of  a  great  futurity  ;  and  to  neglect  these  is  to  pay  a 
dubious  and  even  fatal  honor  to  revelation.  The 
Christian  history  is  a  matter  long  past ;  the  resur- 
recton  of  our  great  Prophet  is  viewed  by  us  at  the  re- 
moter end  of  a  series  of  centuries  ;  and  the  vibration 
with  which  it  should  thrill  our  affections  is  almost 
lost  in  traversing  so  vast  a  gulf.  But  if  in  the  actual 
phenomena  of  human  life  and  its  distribution  of  good 
and  ill,  —  if  in  the  very  constitution  of  our  own 
minds,  there  are  evidences  of  a  cycle  of  existence  be- 
yond the  present,  we  have  here  a  voice,  not  of  history, 
but  of  experience,  bidding  us  to  look  up  ;  a  warning 
from  the  living  present,  not  from  the  tomb  of  the 
past;  and  though  it  may  be  less  clear  in  its  an- 
nouncements, yet  may  the  gentlest  whisper  at  our 
right  hand  startle  us  more  than  the  loudest  echo  from 
afar.  It  is  a  solemn  thing,  when  we  gaze  intently 
at  the  dial  of  our  fate,  and  listen  to  the  beats  that 
number  our  vicissitudes,  to  see  its  index  distinctly 
pointing  to  eternity.  The  exclusive  appeal  to  the 
historical  evidence  of  futurity  is  one  great  cause,  I 
believe,  of  the  feeble  effect  of  this  mighty  expectation. 
Till  it  has  felt  that  Heaven  is  needed  to  complete  the 
history  of  earth,  till  men  become  conscious  of  capac- 
ities for  which  their  present  sphere  of  action  is  too 
contracted,  till  the  wants  of  the  intellect  and  the  affec- 
tions cry  aloud  within  them  for  the  boundless  and  the 
eternal,  the  distant  words  of  Christian  promise  will 
die  away,  ere  they  reach  their  hearts  ;  there  will  be 
no  visible  infinitude  of  hope ;  and  amid  the  incessant 
verbal  recognition  of  the  great  hereafter,  practical 
doubts  will  brood  over  the  feelings,  which  will  blight 
all  true  sincerity  of  faith.  The  character  of  some  of 
these  doubts  I  proceed  to  indicate,  —  doubts  not  of 


GREAT  HOPES  FOR  GREAT  SOULS.         327 

direct  speculation,  not  arising  from  any  perception  of 
fallacy  in  the  evidence,  not  therefore  leading  to  any 
denial  of  the  doctrine  of  futurity,  —  but  doubts  that 
lurk  obscurely  in  the  feelings,  cold,  silent,  undefined; 
that  come  and  go  like  spectres,  —  eome  -when  we  ab- 
hor, and  vanish  when  we  seek  them  ;  that  shun  the 
steady  gaze  of  the  intellect,  and  haunt  with  fiend-like 
stare  the  uplifted  eye  of  broken  hope  and  trembling 
love.  It  will  appear  that  these  doubts  are  peculiar  to 
our  inferior  states  of  character  ;  that  when  the  higher 
parts  of  our  nature  are  developed,  and  the  adaptation 
of  immortality  to  our  true  wants  is  felt,  they  dis- 
appear. 

There  are  doubts  obtruded  on  us  by  our  animal 
nature.  It  is  not  at  all  surprising  that  in  proportion 
as  we  attend  to  the  perishable  part  of  our  nature,  our 
nature  should  appear  perishable  ;  and  that  in  propor- 
tion as  we  neglect  the  mind,  which  alone  has  any 
heritage  in  the  future,  the  future  should  become 
obscure.  True  though  it  is  that  we  are  fearfully 
and  wonderfully  made,  there  is  something  humili- 
tating  in  the  protracted  and  exclusive  study  of  man's 
physical  organizaton ;  and  whatever  indications  it 
affords  of  the  designing  benevolence  of  God,  it  rather 
troubles  than  assists  the  conception  of  the  immortal- 
ity of  man  ;  for  that  benevolence,  being  equally  man- 
ifested in  the  structures  of  the  brute  creation,  cannot 
direct  us  to  the  hopes  of  higher  natures.  When  the 
thoughts  have  been  intently  fixed  on  the  physiology 
of  the  human  body,  when  the  frame  has  been  an- 
alyzed into  its  several  organs,  and  the  functions  of 
our  corporeal  life  described  ;  or  when,  in  studying  the 
natural  history  of  man,  we  are  led  to  compare  him 
with  the  other  tribes  that  people  the  earth,  the  imagi- 


328         GEEAT  HOPES  FOR  GREAT  SOULS. 

nation  rises  from  such  studies  with  secret  uneasiness ; 
it  has  been,  for  the  sake  of  knowledge,  to  the  meaner 
haunts  of  our  being,  just  as  the  philanthropist,  for  the 
sake  of  benevolence,  frequents  the  dingy  recesses  of 
sin  and  misery ;  it  finds  itself  surrounded  with  cling- 
ing impressions  of  materialism,  from  which  it  must 
shake  itself  free,  before  it  can  release  the  holier  rela- 
tions and  loftier  prospets  of  human  existence.  Nor  is 
it  unusual  for  death  to  be  presented  to  us  in  an  as- 
pect which  unreasonably,  but  irresistibly,  troubles  the 
heart's  diviner  trust.  Sometimes  indeed  in  the  last 
hour  of  a  human  life  comes  on  so  gentle  a  wing,  that 
it  seems  a  fit  passage  of  a  soul  to  God ;  the  feeble 
pulse  which  flutters  into  death,  the  fading  eye  whose 
light  seems  not  to  be  blotted  out  but  only  to  retire 
within,  the  fleeting  breath  that  seems  to  stop,  that 
the  spirit  may  depart  in  reverent  silence,  —  are  like 
the  signs  of  a  contented  exchange  of  worlds,  of  a 
mind  that  has  nothing  for  which  to  struggle,  because 
it  passes  to  the  peace  of  God.  But  when  the  strife 
is  strong,  —  when  at  the  solemn  point  of  existence 
which  seems  most  to  demand  an  intent  serenity  of 
the  soul,  the  animal  nature  starts  to  its  supremacy 
and  fiercely  claims  the  mastery,  and  clings  with  con- 
vulsive grasp  to  the  margin  of  mortality,  our  imagina- 
tions are  visited  with  a  deeper  trouble  than  would 
arise  merely  from  sympathy  with  the  departing  suf- 
ferer. '  Is  this,'  we  think  '  the  transition  to  the  skies, 
—  this  more  like  the  end  of  hope  than  the  beginning 
of  peace,  more  like  a  thrust  into  the  blackest  night, 
than  an  ushering  into  the  beautiful  dawn  of  the  eter- 
nal land  ?  '  And  why  is  this  ?  It  is  the  tyranny  of 
our  animal  sympathies  ;  which  may  well  be  sceptical 
of  immortality ;  for  it  is  not  for  them.  The  corporeal- 


GBEAT  HOPES  FOK  GREAT  SOULS.         329 

ity  of  our  nature  is  for  the  time  so  vehemently  forced 
upon  the  attention,  that  we  forget  what  else  there  is  ; 
the  half  of  the  being  is  taken  to  represent  the  whole  ; 
and  that  half  is  really  coming  to  a  close.  When  we 
retire  from  the  dread  impression  of  this  scene,  and 
remember  the  bright  mind  eclipsed  only  during  the 
last  hour;  when  we  recogni/e  in  its  history  many  a 
noble  toil  for  truth,  many  a  holy  effort  of  duty,  many 
an  exhibition  of  moral  and  mental  capability  too 
great  and  gentle  to  find  their  gratification  here,  we 
gradaully  return  from  the  shock  of  nature  to  the 
quietude  of  faith.  But  this  return  depends  on  regard- 
ing the  body  as  the  instrument  of  the  mind  ;  and 
there  are  people  who  never  do  this,  —  men  who  take 
their  limbs  to  be  their  life,  and  confound  their  senses 
with  their  soul,  —  who  say  wise  things  about  the 
blessings  of  health  and  ease,  and  hear  only  empty 
words  when  there  is  mention  of  a  full  mind,  and  pure 
and  resolute  sentiments  of  conscience,  and  earnest 
affections  human  and  divine.  To  such,  —  the  sen- 
sual,—  there  is  nothing  else  in  man  but  body;  take 
that  from  their  conceptions,  and  nothing  remains. 
What  then  but  an  absolute  blank  before  their  mind 
can  be  an  existence  in  which  the  material  interests  of 
our  present  being  utterly  vanish,  and  a  spirituality  un- 
known to  them  even  in  idea  assumes  the  place  ?  To 
say  that  they  must  look  forward  to  it  with  the  same 
kind  of  feeling  as  the  musician  to  becoming  deaf,  and 
the  artist  to  becoming  blind,  fails  to  convey  an  ade- 
quate idea  of  the  emptiness,  the  absolute  nothingness, 
of  their  anticipation.  If  we  could  conceive  a  being 
created  with  no  inlet  of  consciousness  but  the  sense  of 
sight,  —  without  thought,  without  emotion,  without 
other  sensation,  —  a  being  in  fact  all  eye,  we  perceive 


330         CHEAT  HOPES  FOB  GKEAT  SOULS. 

that  it  would  be  the  same  thing  to  him,  whether  his 
vision  be  paralyzed,  or  he  himself  be   planted  in  the 
midst  of  deep  and  rayless  night.     To   such  a  one, 
both  conditions  would  be  a  total  annihilation ;  as  life 
was  nothing  more  than  visual  perception,  so  the  pri- 
vation of  such  perception  would  be  death ;  the  pres- 
ervation   of  the    organ    would    be    attended    by    no 
consciousness :  in  eternal  darkness,  its  function,  its 
pleasures  and  its  pains,  are  for  ever  gone ;  and  had 
it  never  been,  its  non-existence  could  not  be  more 
perfect.     Precisely  similar  is  the  view  of  futurity,  — 
the  futurity  of  the  intellectual  and  social  and  moral 
powers  of  our   nature, — to   the   sensual   in  whom 
these  powers  sleep.      All  the  functions  of  existence 
with  which  he  is  familiar  vanish  from  him ;  and  as 
well  might  he  himself  be  blotted  out,  as  be  placed 
where  all  the  offices  and  elements  of  his  life  disap- 
pear.    He  is  an  eye  dipped  in  darkness,  —  an  ear  left 
alone  in  an  infinitude  of  silence ;  immortality  is  to 
him  but  prolonged  paralysis  ;  it  has  nothing  to  distin- 
guish it  from  death.     What   wonder   then  that,  in 
proportion  as  we  resemble  such  a  being,  our  feelings 
are  harassed  by  a  thousand  doubts  of  renovated  life. 
The  doubts  are  indeed  perfectly  well  founded  ;  for  this 
nature  there  is  no  further  life ;  its  mechanism  wears 
out,  and  death  casts  it  aside  forever;  and,  till  that 
higher  nature,  of  which  it  is  the  organic  instrument, 
is  born  to  full  life  within  us,  we  have  no  kindred  or 
affinity  with  the  eternal  state.     But  when,  by  nobler 
culture,  by  purer  experience,  by  breathing  the  air  of  a 
higher  duty,  vitality  at  length  creeps  into  the  soul,  the 
instincts  of  immortality  will  wake  within  us.     The 
word  of  hope  will  speak  to  us  a  language  no  longer 
strange.     We  shall  feel  like  the  captive  bird  carried 


GEEAT  HOPES  FOE  GEEAT  SOULS.         331 

accidentally  to  its  own  land,  when  hearing  for  the 
first  time  the  burst  of  kindred  song  from  its  native 
woods,  it  beats  instinctively  the  bars  of  its  cage  in 
yearning  for  the  free  air  that  is  thrilled  with  so  sweet 
a  strain. 

There  are  doubts  forced  on  us  by  gur  selfish  na- 
ture. A  hard  and  self-inclosed  mind  is  destitute  of 
the  feelings  that  look  most  intently  on  the  future,  and 
make  it  most  credible,  because  most  urgently  need- 
ed by  us.  It  is  rather  our  sympathetic  than  our  per- 
sonal happiness  that  is  wounded  by  the  conditions 
of  our  mortal  being.  For  ourselves  alone,  if  we  love 
not  deeply  our  own  kind,  it  is  usually  possible  to 
preserve  a  decent  and  sober  life,  a  small  order  of 
happiness,  respectably  ensured  from  ruin,  which  will 
never  feel  impelled  to  look  up  and  cry  aloud  to  God. 
It  is  when  we  suffer  ourselves  to  seek  a  profounder 
but  a  frailer  bliss  ;  when  the  heart  possesses  a  terrible 
stake  in  existence;  when  we  yield  ourselves  to  the 
strongest  love,  and  yet  can  love  nothing  that  we  may 
not  lose ;  that  we  feel  capacities  which  are  mocked 
by  the  brevity  of  life,  and  totally  incapable  of  exhaus- 
tion here.  It  is  our  affections  chiefly  that  are  dispro- 
portioned  to  our  condition ;  they  are  an  over-match 
for  us  in  this  world.  God  would  never  launch  so  frail 
a  vessel  on  so  stormy  a  sea,  where  the  roll  of  every 
wave  may  wreck  us,  were  it  not  designed  to  float  at 
length  on  serener  waters,  and  beneath  gentler  skies. 
Oh  God !  it  is  terrible  to  think  what  may  be  lost  in 
one  human  life ;  what  hope,  what  joy,  what  goodness, 
may  drop  with  one  creature  into  the  grave !  how  all 
things,  now  so  full  of  the  energies  of  a  cheerful  being, 
so  copious  in  motive  and  in  peace,  so  kindled  by  the 
smile  of  Providence,  and  ringing  with  the  happy  voi- 


332         GREAT  HOPES  FOE  GREAT  SOULS. 

ces  of  nature  and  our  kind,  may  droop  and  gloom  be- 
fore us  by  one  little  change  !  It  is  not  from  without 
but  from  within,  —  from  the  sacred  but  changing  orb 
of  our  own  love,  —  that  the  light  and  colors  come,  in 
which  we  see  the  scenery  of  existence  clad  ;  and  if 
there  be  an  eclipse  within,  creation  mourns  beneath  a 
film  of  darkness.  It  is,  however,  in  such  moments  of 
sorrow,  and  in  the  perpetual  consiousness  that  they 
may  come,  that  we  find  the  strongest  call  of  thought 
to  a  more  peaceful  and  stable  being;  and  that  we 
are  urged  to  fly  to  the  distant  regions  in  which  the 
intercepted  light  still  shines.  But  all  this  the  heart 
of  the  selfish  can  never  know;  his  sympathies  are 
well-proportioned  to  the  dimensions  and  the  secu- 
rities of  this  state ;  for  all  that  he  yet  feels,  an  eternal 
life  would  be  an  enormous  over-provision ;  he  has  no 
passionate  tenacity  of  love  that  clings  imploringly  to 
any  blessing ;  but  is  able  to  shrink  into  his  shell  of 
personal  ease,  and  sleep.  Nor  does  the  wider  benev- 
olence, the  spirit  of  Christian  philanthrophy  to  which 
the  selfish  man  is  equally  insensible,  stimulate  less 
urgently  the  demand  for  immortality.  How  is  it  pos- 
sible to  study  deeply  the  lot  of  the  great  majority  of 
men;  —  to  see  them  ground  down  by  toil;  spending 
their  years  in  bare  self-continuation,  and  ending  life 
without  tasting  of  its  fruits;  filled  to  satiety  with 
labor,  and  starved  to  death  within  the  mind,  —  how 
is  it  possible  to  see  so  much  noble  capability  wasted, 
so  much  true  blessedness  lost,  so  many,  first  created 
a  little  lower  than  the  angels,  and  then  forced  nearly 
to  a  level  with  the  brutes,  —  without  providing  in  our 
thoughts  a  future  vindication  of  the  Creator,  —  a  life 
in  which  the  fearful  inequality  will  be  compensated, 
and  the  suspended  good  at  length  born  ?  But  the  cold 


GBEAT  HOPES  FOR  GREAT  SOULS.         333 

and  self-regarding  mind  cannot  understand  a  senti- 
ment like  this.  It  has  no  such  sympathy  with  the 
well-being  of  others  as  to  feel  that  their  habitual  pri- 
vations constitute  a  moral  claim  upon  the  benev- 
olence of  God.  It  has  no  generous  faith  in  the 
possibilities  of  human  improvement ;  but  thinking 
meanly  of  its  kind,  is  not  disconcerted  by  the  mean- 
ness of  its  destiny.  Ignorant  of  the  immeasurable 
contents  of  our  nature,  of  the  resources  of  our  human 
affections,  of  the  heroic  energies  of  duty,  and  the  sub- 
lime peace  of  God,  he  sees  nothing  worth  immortal- 
izing ;  and  because  he  himself  would  be  an  anomaly 
in  heaven,  he  fancies  heaven  too  good  for  man.  Thus 
selfishness,  like  sensuality,  secretly  conscious  of  its 
ignobility,  and  interpreting  by  its  own  experience 
the  whole  race  of  human  kind,  stifles  within  us  the 
Eternal  Hope. 

Causes  not  moral,  like  the  foregoing,  but  merely 
intellectual,  tend  also  to  disturb  the  feelings  with 
doubts  on  this  subject.  Very  contracted  knowledge 
and  feeble  imagination  will  usually  possess  but  a 
fluctuating  faith  in  all  truths  remote  from  experience. 
Though  our  faith  may  go  far  beyond  our  experience, 
it  must  always  be  chained  down  by  it  at  a  distance  ; 
our  conceptions  of  probability  are  limited  by  the  an- 
alogies within  our  reach  ;  the  magnitude  of  each  one's 
possible  must  bear  some  proportion  to  his  actual ;  the 
invisible  scenes  which  he  imagines  will  be  graduated 
by  the  visible  which  he  beholds.  In  proportion,  there- 
fore, as  our  ideas  are  few,  and  the  circle  of  our  intel- 
lectual perceptions  more  narrowly  bounded,  will  it 
be  difficult  for  us  to  feel  the  possibility  of  a  state  so 
totally  new,  so  little  familiarized  to  us  by  any  known 
resemblances  to  our  present  condition,  as  the  futurity 


334         GREAT  HOPES  FOE  GEEAT  SOULS. 

to  which  we  tend.  This  incompetency  of  religious 
imagination  is  far  from  being  exclusively  attendant 
on  what  the  world  calls  ignorance.  It  may  be  found 
often  beneath  the  polished  speech,  the  practised  ad- 
dress, the  agile  faculties  of  men  conspicuous  in  affairs  ; 
being  as  much  the  creation  of  voluntary  habit,  as  the 
consequence  of  helpless  incapacity.  Aptitude  for 
business  is  not  power  of  Reason  ;  and  a  grandee  on 
exchange  may  be  a  pauper  in  God's  universe.  To 
calculate  shrewdly  is  different  from  meditating  wisely ; 
and,  where  turned  into  an  exclusive  engagement,  is 
even  more  hostile  to  it  than  the  torpor  of  the  entire 
mind.  The  pointed,  distinct,  and  microscopic  atten- 
tion which  we  direct  upon  the  details  of  human  ex- 
istence here,  is  unfavorable  to  the  comprehensive 
vision  of  a  boundless  sphere ;  the  glass  through 
which  we  best  look  at  the  minutiae  near  us,  serves 
but  to  confuse  our  gaze  upon  the  stars.  Growing 
knowledge,  enlarging  thought,  the  reverent  estimate  of 
truth  and  beauty,  furnish  us  with  a  thousand  facili- 
ties for  illustrating  and  realizing  the  unseen,  and 
replenishing  its  blank  abyss  with  bright  creations. 
Nay,  the  mental  horizon  spreads  by  mere  extention  of 
the  physical ;  and  as  our  station  rises  above  the 
world,  our  range  of  possibilities  and  our  willingness 
of  faith  appear  to  grow.  For  who  can  deny  the  ef- 
fect of  wide  Space  alone  in  aiding  the  conception  of 
vast  Time?  The  spectator  who  in  the  dingy  cellar 
of  the  city,  under  the  oppression  of  a  narrow  dwelling, 
watching  the  last  moments  of  some  poor  mendicant, 
finds  incongruity  and  perplexity  in  the  thought  of 
the  eternal  state,  would  feel  the  difficulty  vanish  in 
an  instant,  were  he  transplanted  to  the  mountain-top, 
where  the  plains  and  streams  are  beneath  him,  and 


GREAT  HOPES  FOR  GREAT  SOULS.         335 

the  clouds  are  near  him,  and  the  untainted  breeze  of 
Heaven  sweeps  by,  and  he  stands  alone  with  Nature 
and  with  God.  And  when  in  addition  to  the  mere 
spectacle  and  love  of  nature,  there  is  a  knowledge  of 
it  too ;  when  the  laws  and  processes  are  understood 
which  surround  us  with  wonder  and  beauty  every 
day  ;  when  the  great  cycles  are  known  through  which 
the  material  creation  passes  without  decay ;  then, 
in  the  immensity  of  human  hopes,  there  appears 
nothing  which  need  stagger  faith  ;  it  seems  no  longer 
strange,  that  the  mind  which  interprets  the  material 
creation  should  survive  its  longest  period,  and  be  ad- 
mitted to  its  remoter  realms. 

Thus,  in  proportion  as  our  nature  rises  in  its  noble- 
ness, does  it  realize  its  immortality.  As  it  retires  from 
animal  grossness,  from  selfish  meanness,  from  pitiable 
ignorance  or  sordid  neglect,  —  as  it  opens  forth  into 
its  true  intellectual  and  moral  glory,  —  do  its  doubts 
disperse,  its  affections  aspire  :  the  veil  is  uplifted  from 
the  future,  the  darkness  breaks  away,  and  the  spirit 
walks  in  dignity  within  the  paradise  of  God's  Eter- 
nity. What  a  testimony  this  to  the  great  truth  from 
which  our  hope  and  consolations  flow  !  What  an  in- 
citement to  seek  its  bright  and  steady  light  by  the 
culture  of  every  holy  faculty  within  us!  The  more 
we  do  the  will  of  our  Father,  the  more  do  we  feel 
that  this  doctrine  is  indeed  of  him.  Its  affinities  are 
with  the  loftiest  part  of  our  nature  ;  and  in  our  trust 
in  it,  we  ally  ourselves  with  the  choicest  spirits  of 
our  race.  And  while  we  sympathize  with  them  in 
their  past  faith,  we  prepare  to  meet  them  where  we 
may  assume  their  nearer  likeness.  Ever  seek  we 
therefore  the  things  which  are  above. 


XXVII. 

* 

LO!    GOD    IS   HERE! 

ACTS  xvii.  30. 

AND    THE   TIMES    Op    THIS    IGNORANCE    GOD    WINKED    AT  ;     BUT    NOW 
COMMANDETH   ALL  MEN   EVERT  WHERE   TO   REPENT. 

PAUL,  it  would  appear,  looked  with  a  very  different 
feeling  on  times  past,  and  times  present.  Behind 
him,  he  saw  the  age  of  ignorance  and  irreligion,  so 
dark  and  wild,  that  life  appeared  to  lie  quite  outside 
the  realm  of  Providence,  and  earth  to  be  covered  by 
no  heaven.  Around  him  he  beheld  the  very  sera  of 
God,  in  which  the  third  heavens  seemed  almost  with- 
in reach,  and  life  was  so  filled  with  voices  of  duty 
and  hope,  that  it  appeared  like  some  vast  whispering 
gallery,  to  render  what  else  had  been  a  divine  silence 
and  mystery,  audible  and  articulate.  Behind  he  saw 
a  world  abandoned ;  from  which  the  great  Ruler 
seemed  to  have  retired,  or  at  least  averted  the  light 
of  his  countenance ;  to  which  he  spake  no  word,  and 
gave  no  intelligible  sign  ;  about  whose  doings  it  were 
painful  to  say  much  ;  for  so  little  were  they  in  the 
likeness  of  his  government,  so  abhorrent  from  the 
spirit  of  his  sway,  that  they  must  have  been  enacted 
during  the  slumber  of  his  power.  But  now,  the  hour 
of  awakening  had  arrived  ;  the  foul  dream  of  the 
world's  profaneness  must  be  broken  ;  and  Heaven 


LO  !    GOD    IS    HERE  !  337 

would  forbear  no  more.  The  divine  light  was  abroad 
again  ;  divine  tones  were  floating  through  this  lower 
atmosphere,  and  came,  like  solemn  music,  across  the 
carnival  shouts  of  sensualism  and  sin.  Out  of  hear- 
ing of  these  tones,  the  far-travelled  Apostle  never 
passed  ;  they  reached  him  through  the  rush  of  waters, 
as  he  sailed  by  night  over  the  ^Egean ;  the  voluble 
voices  of  Athens  could  not  drown  them ;  they  vibrated 
through  the  traffic  and  the  cries  of  Roman  streets, 
and  even  pierced  the  brutal  acclamations  of  the 
amphitheatre ;  they  were  ubiquitious  as  God,  who 
was  everywhere  commanding  all  men  to  repent. 
Whether  in  his  own  life,  or  in  the  world,  Paul  found 
the  Past,  to  be  profane,  the  Present,  divine. 

With  us  this  order  is  reversed.  Our  faith  delights 
to  expound,  not  what  God  is  doing  now,  but  what  he 
did  once ;  to  prove  that  formerly  he  was  much  con- 
cerned with  the  affairs  of  this  earth  and  the  spirits  of 
men,  though  he  has  abstained  from  personal  inter- 
vention for  many  ages  and  become  a  spectator  of  the 
scene.  The  point  of  time  at  which  our  thoughts 
search  for  his  agency,  and  feel  after  him  to  find  him, 
lies  not  at  hand,  but  far ;  belongs  not  to  to-day,  but 
to  distant  centuries  ;  and  must  be  reached  by  an  his- 
torical memory,  not  by  individual  consciousness.  To 
our  feelings,  the  period  of  Divine  absenteeism  is  the 
present ;  wherein  we  live  on  the  impression  half  worn 
out,  of  his  ancient  visitations ;  obey  as  \ve  can  the 
precepts  he  is  understood  to  have  given  of  the  old ; 
and,  like  children  opening  again  and  again  the  last 
tattered  letter  from  a  parent  mysteriously  silent  in  a 
foreign  land,  cheer  ourselves  with  such  assurance  of 
his  love  as  he  may  have  put  on  record  in  languages 

anterior  to  our  own.     '  O  happy  age,'  — we  think, — 
29 


338  LO  !    GOD    IS    HERE  ! 

'that  really  heard  his  voice!  O  glorious  souls,  that 
felt  his  living  inspiration!  O  blessed  lot,  though  it 
passed  through  the  desert  and  the  fire,  that  lay  be- 
neath the  shelter  of  his  peace!'  In  short,  our  expe- 
rience is  the  opposite  of  Paul's.  That  voice  which 
commanded  all  men  to  repent,  resounds  no  more ;  its 
date  has  gone  clear  away  into  antiquity  ;  and  it  can 
faintly  reach  us  only  through  the  dead  report  of  a 
hundred  witnesses.  Once  it  was  the  very  spirit  of 
God  quivering  over  the  soul  of  man,  —  a  mountain- 
air  stirring  on  the  face  of  the  waters.  The  frosts  of 
time  may  have  fixed  the  surface,  and  caught  the  form ; 
but  how  different  this  from  the  trembling  movement 
of  our  humanity  beneath  the  sweep  of  that  living 
breath  !  No  such  holy  murmur  reaches  us,  to  whom 
the  Present  is  earthly,  and  the  Past  divine. 

Perhaps  some  one  may  deny  that  there  is  any  real 
variance  between  Paul's  estimate  and  ours ;  on  the 
ground  that,  in  his  view,  the  time  sacred  above  all 
others  was  his  own  ;  and  in  our  retrospect  that  time 
remains  so  still.  Yet  it  may  be  conjectured,  that  if 
we  could  be  put  back  into  his  age,  we  should  hardly 
see  it  with  his  eyes.  Possibly  enough,  we  might  look 
about  to  no  purpose  for  that  presence  of  the  Holiest 
which  followed  him  through  life  ;  and  listen  with  dis- 
appointed ear,  for  that  whisper  that  '  everywhere ' 
came  to  him  from  the  Infinite;  and  though  at  his 
side  when  he  was  in  the  third  heaven,  might  see 
nothing  but  the  walls  of  his  apartment,  in  coldest 
exile  from  the  transport  of  the  skies.  If  you  go  into 
the  tent-maker's  warehouse,  where  he  worked  at 
Corinth,  you  find  the  canvass  and  the  tools,  and 
even  the  men  that  ply  them,  such  as  you  may  pass 
without  notice  every  day.  The  lane  in  which  he 


ro  !  GOD  is  HEKE  !  339 

lived  in  Rome  seems  too  dingy  for  anything  divine, 
and  the  noisy  neighbors  too  ordinary  to  kindle  any 
elevated  zeal.  The  city's  heat  and  din,  the  common 
crush  of  life,  the  hurry  from  task  to  task,  seem  far 
enough  from  the  cool  atmosphere  of  prayer,  and  the 
glad  silence  of  immortal  hopes.  And  if  you  converse 
with  the  men  and  women,  for  whom  the  Apostle 
gave  his  toils  and  tears,  who  received  the  whole  af- 
fluence of  his  sympathies,  you  may  be  amazed  per- 
chance, that  he  could  find  them  so  interesting ;  and 
lament  to  discover  in  such  an  age  of  golden  days,  the 
vulgar  speech,  the  narrow  rnind,  the  selfish  will,  the 
envious  passions,  of  these  later  times.  And  taking 
the  converse  supposition,  — think  you,  if  he  had  been 
transplanted  from  Mars  Hill  to  Westminster,  he 
would  have  been  beyond  the  hearing  of  that  voice  of 
God  which  he  proclaimed  and  obeyed  ?  —  that  the 
celestial  light  which  rested  upon  life  would  have 
passed  away  ?  —  that  his  hope  would  have  been  as 
faint,  his  worship  as  unreal,  his  whole  being  as 
mechanical,  as  ours  ?  Ah,  no  !  let  there  be  a  soul  of 
power  like  his  within ;  and  it  matters  not  what 
weight  of  world  may  be  cast  on  it  from  without.  Be 
we  in  this  century  or  that,  —  nay  in  heaven  or  on 
earth, —  it  is  not  that  we  find,  but  that  we  must 
make,  the  Present  holy  and  divine. 

In  vain  then  do  we  plead,  that  our  view  of  time 
coincides  with  that  of  Paul.  With  such  temper  as 
we  have,  we  should  have  listened  to  him  on  Areo- 
pagus in  the  spirit  of  the  Epicureans  that  heard  him ; 
not  refusing  perhaps  to  join  the  light  laugh  at  his 
enthusiasm ;  and  wondering  how  a  man  with  his  foot 
on  the  solid  ground  of  life  and  nature,  can  cast  himself 
madly  into  the  abyss  of  a  fancied  futurity,  and  an 


340  LO  !    GOD    IS    HERE  ! 

absent  God.  And  as,  in  yielding  to  the  suggestions 
of  such  temper,  we  should  have  felt  falsely,  and  have 
looked  on  Paul's  age  with  a  deluded  eye,  so  would 
his  be  the  true  vision  of  our  times  ;  and  his  earnest 
proclamation  of  the  continued  sanctity  of  existence 
would  show  his  discerning  intuition  of  realities  con- 
cealed from  us.  For  God  has  not  faded  into  a  re- 
membrance ;  he  has  not  retired  from  this  scene  with 
the  generations  known  only  to  tradition.  His  ener- 
gies have  no  era  ;  his  sentiments  cannot  be  obsolete ; 
(  his  compassions  fail  not.'  Why,  even  sense  and 
material  nature,  his  poorest  and  faintest  interpreters, 
rebuke  this  foolish  dream,  — that  he  was,  rather  than 
is.  They  forbid  us  to  think  of  him  thus,  were  it  only 
in  the  mere  character  of  the  Creator.  They  show  us 
in  the  very  structure  of  our  globe,  —  in  the  rocks  be- 
neath our  feet,  —  in  the  vast  cemeteries  and  monu- 
ments they  disclose  of  departed  races  of  creatures,  — 
that  creation  is  not  single,  but  successive ;  not 
an  act,  but  a  process ;  not  the  work  of  a  week  or 
of  a  century,  but  of  immeasurable  ages  ;  not  more- 
over past  but  continuous  and  everlasting  ;  as  busy,  as 
mysterious,  as  vast  now,  as  in  the  darkest  antiquity ; 
so  that  Genesis  tells  the  story  of  last  week,  as  truly 
as  of  the  six  days  that  ushered  in  the  world's  first 
Sabbath.  The  universe  indeed  is  not  so  much  a 
definite  machine  which  once  he  made,  and  beyond 
which  he  dwells  to  see  it  move,  as  his  own  infinite 
abode  and  ever-changing  manifestation  ;  —  living,  be- 
cause the  dwelling  of  his  power,  —  boundless,  be- 
cause the  chamber  of  his  presence ;  ever  fresh, 
because  the  receptacle  of  his  designs ;  fair,  because 
the  expression  of  his  love.  Now,  as  of  old,  he  that 
will  listen  with  the  open  ear  of  meditation,  may 


i,o !  GOD  is  HERE!  341 

surely  hear  the  Lord  God  walking  in  his  garden  of 
Creation  in  the  cool  of  every  day. 

The  same  temper  which  leads  us  to  search  for 
Deity  only  in  distant  times,  causes  us  to  banish  him 
also  into  distant  space ;  and  persuades  us  that  he  is 
not  here,  but  there.  He  is  thought  to  dwell  above, 
beneath,  around  the  earth ;  but  who  ever  thinks  of 
meeting  him  on  its  very  dust?  Awfully  he  shrouds 
the  abyss;  and  beningly  he  gazes  on  us  from  the 
stars ;  but  in  the  field  and  the  street,  no  trace  of  him 
is  felt  to  be.  Under  the  ocean,  and  in  the  desert,  and 
on  the  mountain-top,  he  is  believed  to  rest;  but  into 
the  nearer  haunts  of  town  and  village,  we  rarely  con- 
ceive him  to  penetrate.  Yet  where  better  could 
wisdom  desire  his  presence,  than  in  the  common 
homes  of  men,  —  in  the  thick  cares  and  heavy  toils, 
and  grievous  sorrows,  of  humanity  ?  For  surely,  if 
Nature  needs  him  much  in  her  solitudes,  life  requires 
him  more  in  the  places  of  passion  and  of  sin.  And 
in  truth,  if  we  cannot  feel  him  near  us  in  this  world, 
we  could  approach  him,  it  is  greatly  to  be  feared,  in 
no  other.  Could  a  wish  remove  us  bodily  to  any 
distant  sphere  supposed  to  be  divine,  the  heavenly 
presence  would  flit  away  as  we  arrived ;  would  occu- 
py rather  the  very  earth  we  had  been  eager  to  quit ; 
and  would  leave  us  still  amid  the  same  material 
elements,  that  seem  to  hide  the  Infinite  vision  from 
our  eyes.  Go  where  we  may,  we  seem  mysteriously 
to  carry  our  own  circumference  of  darkness  with  us; 
for  who  can  quit  his  own  centre,  or  escape  the  point 
of  view,  —  or  of  blindness, — which  belongs  to  his 
own  identity  ?  He  who  is  not  with  God  already, 
can  by  no  path  of  space  find  the  least  approach ;  in 
vain  would  you  lend  him  the  wing  of  angel  or  the 
29* 


342  LO!  GOD  is  HERE! 

speed  of  light;  in  vain  plant  him  here  or  there, —  on 
this  side  of  death  or  that ;  he  is  in  the  outer  darkness 
still;  having  that  inner  blindness  which  would  leave 
him  in  pitchy  night,  though  like  the  angel  of  the 
Apocalypse,  he  were  standing  in  the  sun.  But  ceas- 
ing all  vain  travels,  and  remaining  with  his  foot  upon 
this  weary  earth,  let  him  subside  into  the  debths  of 
his  own  wonder  and  love ;  let  the  touch  of  sorrow,  or 
the  tears  of  conscience,  or  the  toils  of  duty,  open  the 
hidden  places  of  his  affections; — and  the  distance, 
infinite  before,  wholly  disappears ;  and  he  finds,  like 
the  Patriarch,  that  though  the  stone  is  his  pillow,  and 
the  earth  his  bed,  he  is  yet  in  the  very  house  of  God, 
and  at  the  gate  of  heaven.  Oh!  my  friends,  if  there 
be  nothing  celestial  without  us,  it  is  only  because  all 
is  earthly  within ;  if  no  divine  colors  upon  our  lot, 
it  is  because  the  holy  light  is  faded  on  the  soul ;  if 
our  Father  seems  distant,  it  is  because  we  have  taken 
our  portion  of  goods,  and  travelled  into  a  far  country, 
to  set  up  for  ourselves,  that  we  may  foolishly  enjoy, 
rather  than  reverently  serve.  Whenever  he  is  im- 
magined  to  be  remote  and  almost  slumbering,  be 
assured  it  is  human  faith  that  is  really  heavy  and  on 
the  verge  of  sleep ;  drowsy  with  too  much  ease,  or 
tired  with  too  much  sense ;  that  it  has  lapsed  from 
the  severe  and  manly  strivings  of  duty  and  affection, 
and  given  itself  over  to  indulgence,  and  become  the 
lazy  hireling  of  prudence.  An  Epicurean  world  inevit- 
ably makes  an  Epicurean  God ;  and  when  we  cease 
to  do  anything  from  spontaneous  loyalty  to  the  great 
Ruler,  we  necessarily  doubt  whether  he  can  have 
occasion  to  do  anything  for  us.  Such  doubts  are 
vainly  attacked  by  speculative  proof,  and  evidence 
skilfully  arranged;  the  clearest  and  the  cloudiest 


LO  !    GOD    IS    HEKE  !  343 

intellect  are  liable  to  them  alike ;  for  they  arise  from 
the  practical  feebleness  of  the  inner  man;  from  a 
dwindled  force  in  the  earnest,  self-forgetful  affections ; 
and  can  be  dissipated  only  by  trustful  abandonment 
once  more  to  some  object  of  duty  and  devotion. 
The  times  and  people  that  have  vividly  felt  the  prox- 
imity of  God,  have  always  been  characterized  by 
hearty  and  productive  affections ;  by  vast  enterprises 
and  great  sacrifices ;  by  the  seeds  of  mighty  thought 
dropped  upon  the  world,  and  the  fruits  of  great 
achievements  contributed  to  human  history.  In  con- 
tact with  every  grand  era  in  the  experience  of  man- 
kind, will  be  found  the  birth  of  religion;  —  a  fresh 
discovery  of  the  preternatural  and  mysterious;  a 
plenary  sense  of  God;  the  descent  of  a  Holy  Spirit 
on  waiting  hearts;  a  day  of  Pentecost  to  strong  and 
faithful  souls,  giving  them  the  utterance  of  a  divine 
persuasion,  and  dispersing  a  new  Gospel  over  the 
world.  We,  alas!  are  far  enough,  —  far  at  least  as 
the  days  of  Wesley,  —  from  any  such  period  of  in- 
spiration in  the  past ;  perhaps,  however,  the  nearer  to 
it  in  the  future,  as  there  is  no  night  unfollowed  by 
the  dawn.  It  is  not  permitted  us  too  curiously  to 
search  the  hidden  providences  of  our  humanity;  but 
one  thing  we  cannot  fail  to  notice ;  that  a  return  to 
simple,  undisguised  affections,  —  to  natural  and  vera- 
cious speech, — to  earnest  and  inartificial  life,  —  has 
characterized  every  great  and  noble  period,  and  all 
morally  powerful  and  venerable  men.  To  such  tastes 
and  affections,  and  to  the  secret  rule  of  conscience 
which  presides  among  them,  we  must  learn  to  trust, 
•whatever  be  the  seductions  of  opinion,  and  the  sophis- 
tries of  expediency,  and  even  the  pleadings  of  the 
speculative  intellect.  When  thus  we  fear  to  quench 


344  L.O  !    GOD    IS    HEKE  ! 

his  spirit,  God  will  not  suffer  our  time  to  be  a  dreary 
and  unconsecrated  thing.  Swept  by  the  very  borders 
of  his  garment,  we  shall  not  look  far  for  his  glorify- 
ing presence.  The  poorest  outward  condition  will  do 
nothing  to  obliterate  the  solmnity  from  life.  Nay  of 
nothing  may  we  be  more  sure  than  this ;  that  if  we 
cannot  sanctify  our  present  lot,  we  could  sanctify  no 
other.  Our  heaven  and  our  almighty  Father  are 
there  or  nowhere.  The  obstructions  of  that  lot  are 
given  for  us  to  heave  away  by  the  concurrent  touch  of 
a  holy  spirit,  and  labor  of  strenuous  will;  its  gloom, 
for  us  to  tint  with  some  celestial  light ;  its  mysteries 
are  for  our  worship;  its  sorrows  for  our  trust;  its 
perils  for  our  courage ;  its  temptations  for  our  faith. 
Soldiers  of  the  cross,  it  is  not  for  us,  but  for  our 
Leader  and  our  Lord,  to  choose  the  field ;  it  is  ours, 
taking  the  station  which  he  assigns,  to  make  it  the 
field  of  truth  and  honor,  though  it  be  the  field  of 
death. 

It  is  a  part  of  the  illusion,  which  contrasts  us  with 
Paul,  that  we  esteem  God  to  be  without  us,  rather 
than  within  us ;  a  mode  of  conception  which  I  believe 
to  be  ultimately  fatal  to  that  religious  life,  from  the 
incipient  feebleness  of  which  it  originally  springs. 
What  has  been  really  meant  by  those  devout  men 
who  have  freely  spoken  of  God's  communion  with 
them,  and  of  the  thoughts  which  he  has  put  into  the 
heart?  That  these  thoughts  did  actually  arise  and 
must  be  accepted  as  facts,  will  hardly  be  denied. 
Nor  will  it  be  doubted  that,  in  the  thinker's  view,  they 
appeared  most  high  and  solemn  ;  and  that  in  no  other 
way  could  their  beauty  and  authority  be  expressed, 
than  by  calling  them  emanations  from  the  supreme 
Source  of  the  binding  and  beautiful.  To  affirm  the 


LO!  GOD  is  HEBE!  345 

the  purest  and  deepest  movements  of  our  nature  to  be 
from  God,  is  the  natural  utterance  of  full  reverence 
for  them ;  to  deny  their  origin  from  him,  is  a  distinct 
profession  that  that  reference  has  declined ;  they  are 
sought  for  at  a  lower  source,  because  they  have  de- 
scended to  a  meaner  place.  And  while  this  denial 
indicates  a  fainter  piety,  it  is  no  sign  of  stronger 
reason.  What  emboldens  you  to  contradict  the 
universal  testimony  of  souls  aloft  in  worship,  —  the 
natural  language  of  poet,  saint,  and  prophet  ?  How 
do  you  know  that  in  the  affections  that  most  glorify 
their  hearts,  there  is  no  immediate  light  of  Heaven  ? 
You  say,  perhaps,  they  are  experiences  by  the  wor- 
shipper's own  mind,  and  must  be  parts  of  the  nature 
that  feels  them.  But  it  does  not  follow  that,  because 
they  are  included  in  the  consciousness  of  men,  they 
indicate  no  presence  and  living  touch  of  God.  Or 
you  say,  there  is  no  miracle  in  them,  and  they  come 
and  go  by  laws  not  quite  untraceable.  But  this  only 
shows  that  the  divine  agency,  if  there,  is  free  from  dis- 
order and  caprice,  and  loves  to  be  constant  in  behalf 
of  those  who  are  faithful' to  its  conditions.  Or  do 
you  complain  of  the  idle  fanaticism,  which  often  have 
preferred  this  tempting  claim  ?  Idle  they  may  be  to 
you,  to  whose  mind  they  stand  in  quite  different  re- 
lation ;  but  not  perhaps  to  those  whom  assuredly 
they  raise  to  higher  life.  We  are  not  all  alike  ;  and 
God  does  not  exist  for  any  miserable  egotist  alone. 
We  are  all  indeed  set  in  one  infinite  sphere  of  uni- 
versal reason  and  conscience ;  but  scattered  over  it  to 
follow  separate  circles,  and  attain  every  variety  of 
altitude  in  faith.  Like  stars  upon  the  same  meridian, 
whose  culminating  points  cannot  be  alike,  we  touch 
our  supreme  height  at  different  elevations ;  and  the 


346  xo  !  GOD  is  IIEKE! 

measure  which  is  far  down  on  the  course  of  one 
mind,  may  be  the  acme  of  religion  in  another.  And  it 
is  as  worthy  of  God  to  lift  every  soul  to  the  ethereal 
summit  proper  to  it,  as  to  roll  the  heavens,  and  call 
forth  their  lights  by  interval  and  number,  and  see 
that '  not  one  faileth.'  And  as  there  is  no  ground  in 
experience  for  rejecting  the  old  language  of  devotion, 
neither  is  there  any  in  the  claim  of  consistent  philos- 
ophy. We  find  men  ready  enough  to  allow  that 
there  is  no  place  where  God  is  not,  perhaps  no  time 
when  his  external  power  is  not  active  in  some  realm 
or  other.  And  why  then  withhold  from  him  that  in- 
ternal and  spiritual  sphere  of  which  all  else  is  but  the 
theatre  and  the  temple  ?  What  can  dead  space  want 
with  the  divine  presence,  compared  with  the  ever- 
perilled  soul  of  man,  perpetually  trembling  on  the 
verge  of  grief  or  sin  ?  Shall  we  coldly  speculate  on 
the  physical  Omnipresence  of  the  Infinite,  and  ques- 
tion the  ubiquity  of  his  moral  power?  —  diffuse  him 
as  an  atmosphere,  and  forget  that  he  is  a  Mind  ?  — 
plead  for  his  mechanical  action  on  matter,  and  doubt 
the  contact  of  spirit  with  spirit?  —  admit  the  agency 
of  the  artist,  on  his  work,  and  deny  the  embrace  of 
the  Father  and  the  child  ?  It  were  indeed  strange, 
if  this  anomaly  were  true.  Where  is  this  blessed 
object  of  our  worship,  if  not  within  our  souls?  What 
possible  ground  is  there  for  affirming  him  to  be  else- 
where and  not  here  ?  Far  more  plausible  would  the 
limitation  be,  if  we  were  to  declare  him  manifestly 
existent  here  alone.  All  external  things  are  appre- 
hensible by  sense,  and  it  is  to  discover  the  outward 
creation  that  the  senses  are  given.  All  internal 
things  are  apprehended  by  thought,  and  it  is  to  seize 
this  far  higher  order  of  realities,  that  thought  is 


LO  !  GOD  is  HERE!  347 

given.  Never  was  eye  or  ear  made  perceptive  of 
Deity;  'no  man  hath  heard  his  voice  at  any  time  or 
seen  his  form;'  he  is  the  object  of  simply  spiritual 
discernment,  the  holy  image,  mysteriously  shaped 
forth  from  the  quarries  of  our  purest  thought,  and 
glowing  with  life,  beauty  and  power,  in  the  inmost 
sanctuary  of  the  mind.  And  his  reality  there  is  a 
certainty  of  the  same  rank  as  the  existence  of  the 
universe  without.  There  is  truth  then,  and  only  a 
wise  enthusiasm,  in  the  established  strains  of  Chris- 
tian piety;  invoking  the  presence  of  the  Holiest  to 
the  soul  as  his  loved  retreat,  and  humbly  referring  to 
him  the  purest  thoughts  and  best  desires.  I  pretend 
not  to  draw  the  untraceable  line  that  separates  his 
being  from  ours.  The  decisions  of  the  Will,  doubt- 
less, are  our  own,  and  constitute  the  proper  sphere  of 
our  personal  agency.  But  in  a  region  higher  than 
the  Will,  —  the  realm  of  spontaneous  thought  and 
emotion,  —  there  is  scope  enough  for  his  '  abode 
with  us.'  Whatever  is  most  deep  within  us  is  the 
reflection  of  himself.  All  our  better  love,  and  higher 
aspirations,  are  the  answering  movements  of  our  na- 
ture in  harmonious  obedience  to  his  spirit.  What- 
ever dawn  of  blessed  sanctity,  and  wakening  of 
purer  perceptions,  opens  on  our  consciousness,  are 
the  sweet  touch  of  his  morning  light  within  us.  His 
inspiration  is  perenial ;  and  he  never  ceases  to  work 
within  us,  if  we  consent  to  will  and  to  do  his  good 
pleasure.  He  befriends  our  moral  efforts ;  encourages 
us  to  maintain  our  resolute  fidelity  and  truth  ;  accepts 
our  co-operation  with  his  designs  against  all  evil; 
and  reveals  to  us  many  things  far  too  fair  and  deep 
for  language  to  express.  But,  while  he  is  thus 
prompt  to  come  with  his  Spirit  to  the  help  of  seeking 


348  LO!  GOD  is  HEKE! 

hearts,  he  is  expelled  by  the  least  unfaithfulness;  and 
when  the  '  spirit  of  truth  '  is  driven  away,  this  holy 
*  Comforter'  no  longer  remains.  To  receive  the  pro- 
mise, we  must  deserve  the  prayer,  of  Christ,  —  that 
we  '  may  be  kept  from  the  evil,'  and  '  sanctified 
through  the  truth.'  Finding  a  Holy  of  Holies  with- 
in us,  we  need  not  curiously  ask  whether  its  secret 
voices  are  of  ourselves  or  of  the  Father.  Christ  felt 
how,  within  the  deeps  of  our  spiritual  nature,  the 
personalities  of  Heaven  and  earth  might  become 
entwined  together  and  indissolubly  blended :  '  Thou, 
Father,  art  in  me,  and  I  in  Thee,  and  they  also  one 
in  us.'  And  so,  the  Holy  Spirit  within  us,  the  spirit 
of  Christ,  and  the  spirit  of  God,  are  after  all  but  one ; 
—  a  blessed  Trinity,  our  part  in  which  gives  to  our 
souls  a  dignity  most  humbling  yet  august. 


XXVIII. 

CHRISTIAN    SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 
GENESIS  in.  22. 

AND   THE   LORD   GOD   SAID,    BEHOLD,  THE   MAN   IS   BECOME  AS   ONE  OF 
US,    TO   KNOW   GOOD   AND   EVIL. 

IT  is  a  favorite  doctrine  of  one  of  the  wisest 
thinkers  of  our  day,  that  'if  Adam  had  remained  in 
Paradise,  there  had  been  no  anatomy,  and  no  meta- 
physics.' In  other  words,  it  is  only  on  the  lapse 
from  the  state  of  health,  that  we  find  we  have  a 
body ;  and  on  the  loss  of  innocence,  that  we  become 
conscious  of  a  soul.  Disease  and  wrong  are  the 
awakers  of  our  reflection;  they  bring  our  outward 
pursuits  to  a  pause,  and  force  us  to  look  within ;  and 
the  extent  of  our  self-study  and  self-knowledge  may 
be  taken  as  a  measure  of  the  depth  to  which  the 
poison  of  evil  has  penetrated  into  our  frame.  The 
man  who,  instead  of  being  surrendered  to  spontane- 
ous action,  voluntarily  retires  to  think,  has  fallen  sick, 
and  can  effect  no  more.  The  art  which  has  recov- 
ered from  its  trance  of  inspiration  and  found  out  that 
it  has  rules,  begins  to  manufacture  and  ceases  to 
create.  The  literature  which  directs  itself  to  an  end, 
and  critically  seeks  the  means,  may  yield  the  produce 
of  ingenuity,  but  not  the  fruit  of  genius.  The  society 
which  understands  its  own  structure,  talks  of  its 
30 


350  CHRISTIAN     SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 

grievances,  plumes  itself  on  its  achievements,  and  pre- 
scribes for  its  own  case,  is  already  in  a  state  of  in- 
evitable decadence.  And  the  religion  which  has 
begun  to  inquire,  to  sift  out  its  errors,  and  treasure 
up  its  truths,  has  lost  its  breath  of  healthy  faith,  and 
only  gasps  in  death.  With  sighs  and  irresistible 
longings,  does  this  noble  writer  look  back  upon 
imaginary  ages  of  involuntary  heroism,  when  the 
great  and  good  knew  not  their  greatness  and  good- 
ness, and  genius  was  found  which  was  a  secret  to 
itself,  and  men  lived  for  God's  sake,  instead  of  for 
their  own.  Could  he  realize  his  dream  of  perfection, 
he  would  stock  the  world  with  activity,  and  fill  it 
with  men  who  know  not  what  they  do. 

This  celebrated  paradox  could  never  occupy  a 
mind  like  Mr.  Carlyle's,  did  it  not  envelop  an  impor- 
tant and  seasonable  truth.  But  before  we  give  our- 
selves up  to  the  despondency  it  must  inspire,  it  is  as 
well  to  see  whether  there  is  no  illusion  in  its  sadness  ; 
and  whether  its  pathetic  complaints  may  not  even  be 
turned,  by  an  altered  modulation,  into  a  hymn  of 
thanksgiving. 

To  sigh  after  an  unconscious  life.  —  what  is  it  but 
to  protest  against  the  very  power  of  thought  ?  To 
think  is  not  merely  to  have  ideas, —  to  be  the  theatre 
across  which  images  and  emotions  are  marched ;  — 
but  to  sit  in  the  midst  as  master  of  one's  concep- 
tions ;  to  detain  them  for  audience,  or  dismiss  them 
at  a  glance ;  to  organize  them  into  coherence  and  di- 
rect them  to  an  end.  It  implies  at  every  step  the  me- 
mory and  deliberate  review  of  past  states  of  mind,  the 
voluntary  estimate  of  them,  and  control  over  them. 
It  is  a  royal  act  in  which  we  possess  the  objects 
which  engage  us,  and  are  not  possessed  by  them. 


CHKISTIA.N    SELF-COXSCIOUSXESS.  351 

It  is  an  act  of  intense  self-consciousness,  whose  whole 
energy  consists  in  this,  that  the  mind  is  kindled  by 
seeing  itself,  as  if  the  light  were  to  become  sensitive, 
and  turn  also  to  vision. 

Again,  to  sigh  for  an  unconscious  life,  is  to  protest 
against  Conscience.  For  what  is  this  faculty  but, 
as  its  name  denotes,  a  knowledge  with  one's  self  of 
the  worth  and  excellence  of  the  several  principles  of 
action  by  which  we  are  impelled  ?  Shall  we  desire 
to  be  impelled  by  them  still,  only  remaining  in  the 
dark  as  to  their  value  and  our  obligations?  —  to  be 
the  creature  of  each,  as  its  turn  may  come,  without 
choice  between  the  baser  and  the  nobler,  or  percep- 
tion of  difference  between  appetite  and  inspiration  ? 
Duty  implies,  in  every  form,  that  a  man  is  entrusted 
with  himself;  that  he  is  expected  to  overlook  and 
direct  himself;  to  maintain  therefore  an  open  eye  on 
the  spiritual  world  within,  and  preserve  throughout  a 
sacred  order. 

And  once  more,  to  pray  for  an  unconscious  life,  is 
to  desire  an  incapacity  for  Faith.  For  what  is  faith, 
but  trust  in  an  Infinite  and  Holy  One,  of  whom 
we  could  have  no  conception,  if  our  aspirations 
did  not  transcend  our  realities;  if  the  ideal  faculty 
did  not  survey  the  actual  and  find  it  wanting? 
Our  own  spirit  is  the  vestibule  which  we  must 
enter,  as  threshold  to  the  temple  of  the  Eternal, 
and  wherein  alone  we  can  catch  any  whisper  from 
the  Holy  of  Holies.  A  man  who  had  never  found 
his  soul,  could  assuredly  never  see  his  God. 

Scarcely  can  we  admit  a  theory  to  be  true,  which 
implies  that  Thought,  Duty,  Will,  and  Faith,  are  so 
many  diseases  in  our  constitution,  over  which  it  be- 
comes us  to  weep  the  tears  of  protestation.  These, 


352  CHRISTIAN    SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 

and  the  self-consciousness  which  renders  us  capable 
of  them,  are  the  supreme  glory  of  our  nature :  raising 
it  above  the  mere  instinctive  life  of  the  brute  creation, 
making  it  agent  as  well  as  instrument,  and  giving  it 
two  worlds  to  live  in  instead  of  one. 

If,  however,  this  power  of  self-consciousness  be  as- 
signed to  us  as  our  special  dignity  and  strength,  it 
may  be  turned  to  our  weakness  and  our  shame.    The 
peculiar  faculty  in  man,  of  overlooking  himself,  is  but 
the  needful  condition  and  natural  preparation  for  an- 
other—  that  of  directing  himself.     Why  show  him 
his  place,  but  that  he  may  choose  his  way  ?     Why 
wake  him  up, —  alone  of  all  creatures, —  if  the  night- 
mare of  necessity  is  to  sit  upon  him  still  ?     If  his 
course  be  determined  for  him,  and  not  by  him,  why 
not  lock  him  fast,  like  all  similar  natures,  in  the  in- 
terior of  his   perceptions    and    impulses,  as   in   the 
scenery  of  a  dream,  instead  of  carrying  him  outside 
to  survey  them?     A  thing  that  is  at  the  disposal  of 
foreign  forces,  that  is  moved  hither  and  thither  by  laws 
imposed  upon  it,  would  plainly  be  none  the  better 
for  the  gift  of  self-knowledge.     If  the  planet,  urged 
through  an  inflexible  orbit  by  determinate  mechanism, 
were  made  aware  of  its  own  history,  no  hair's  breadth 
of  guidance  would  the  revelation  give.     If  the  tree 
could  study  its  own  physiology,  its  growth  would  be 
no   nobler,  and   its  fruit   no   fairer.     If  the   animal 
could  scrutinize  its  instincts,  they  would  perform  no 
new  function,  and  afford  no  happier  guidance.     And 
if  man  can  superintend  his  own  mind  it  is  because  he 
is  not  like  the  planet,  the  tree,  the  brute,  the  mere 
theatre  on  which  forces   display  themselves,  but  a 
fresh  power  in  himself,  able  to  originate  action  in 
the  same  sense  in  which  God  originates  the  universe. 


CHRISTIAN    SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.  353 

Every  sentient  being  perceives  enough  for  its  own 
direction  ;  if  you  look  round  the  circle  of  its  percep- 
tions, you  ascertain  the  sources  of  its  guidance. 
Animals,  that  are  at  the  exclusive  disposal  .of  the 
external  objects  related  to  them,  are  alive  to  the  ex- 
ternal world  alone.  Man,  capable  of  withstanding 
extrinsic  agencies,  and  having  a  creative  centre  with- 
in him,  is  alive  to  his  own  soul  as  well.  Shut  us 
fast  up  in  the  line  of  nature,  and  nature  is  all  that  we 
want  to  know.  Set  us  free  to  stand  above  nature, 
and  live  with  an  upper  region  of  the  spirit  stretching 
beyond  her  realm,  not  subject  only  but  also  Lord,  and 
we  need  for  the  first  time  that  self-consciousness 
which  is  the  condition  of  liberty,  and  the  first  element 
of  wisdom.  It  is  because  we  have  a  work  of  choice 
assigned  us,  because  we  are  entrusted  with  the  power 
to  control  our  instincts,  and  subject  the  spontaneous 
natural  life  to  the  voluntary  and  spiritual,  that  we 
alone  have  the  faculty  of  reflection.  It  is  the  superior 
light  awarded  to  our  special  obligations.  Self-con- 
sciousness, thus  superadded  to  our  mere  sentient  na- 
ture, becomes,  by  this  association,  not  less  our  tempta- 
tion than  our  dignity.  If  pain  and  pleasure  constituted 
the  ultimate  interests  of  life,  we  could  dispense  with 
the  attribute  of  self-inspection  as  well  as  the  brutes  ; 
in  short,  we  should  be  in  that  case  but  a  nobler  sort 
of  brute,  differing  from  other  species  only  in  having 
more  numerous  resources  for  our  sensitive  nature,  — 
a  richer  table  spread  for  more  varied  appetites,  of 
the  palate  or  of  the  mind.  Senses,  however  multi- 
plied ;  taste,  however  exquisite ;  capacities  for  enjoy- 
ment never  so  fine,  —  want  no  faculty  of  reflection, 
and  must  know  that  it  is  not  for  them.  But  while  it 
is  not  for  their  sakes,  it  is  of  necessity  in  their  pres- 
30* 


354  CHRISTIAN    SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 

ence,  and  within  their  hearing,  that  the  arcana  of  life 
are  revealed  to  us.  Appetite  and  Conscience,  like 
two  spirits  of  the  lower  and  upper  world,  live  to- 
gether in  the  same  house,  so  that  the  revelation  made 
for  one  is  little  likely  to  remain  secret  from  the  other; 
and  it  is  in  the  power  of  the  fiend  to  steal  the  privity 
of  the  angel,  and  break  the  seals  of  the  divinest 
message.  Hence  there  comes  about  an  impious 
abuse  of  the  god-like  gift  of  self-conscious  life ;  and 
instead  of  serving  as  the  handmaid  of  duty,  it  is  de- 
graded into  the  pander  of  appetite.  Nothing  can  be 
baser  than  this  sweet  poisoning  of  moral  truth  for  the 
relish  of  sin.  Thus  to  use  our  human  secret  as  a 
cunning  way  of  getting  an  advantage  over  the  brutes, 
is  a  downright  betrayal  of  the  confidence  of  God,  — 
a  bartering  in  Hell  of  that  which  we  have  overheard 
in  Heaven. 

This  faculty,  then,  of  reflection  upon  himself,  his  life, 
his  nature,  his  relations,  is  the  peculiarity  which,  in 
proportion  as  it  becomes  marked,  places  a  man  at  a 
distance  from  the  brutes.  When  applied  to  its  true 
purpose  of  surveying  his  responsibilities,  judging  his 
modes  of  activity  and  affection,  and  enforcing  a 
Christian  order  throughout  his  soul,  it  becomes  a  god- 
like prerogative,  and  lifts  him  to  angel  life.  When 
perverted  to  a  false  purpose  of  prying  into  his  passive 
sensations,  and  discovering  the  means  of  getting  drunk 
with  instinctive  pleasures,  and  turning  the  healthy 
hunger  of  nature  into  the  feverish  greed  of  Epicurism, 
it  becomes  a  fallen  spirit,  and  allies  its  possessor  with 
the  fiends.  Man,  the  self-conscious  animal,  is  the  sad- 
dest spectacle  in  creation ;  man,  the  self-conscious 
Christian,  one  of  the  noblest.  Reflecting  vitality  is 
hypochondria  and  disease ;  reflecting  spirituality  is 
clearness  and  strength. 


CHRISTIAN    SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 


355 


This  general  doctrine  has  a  direct  bearing  upon  a 
question  which  is  often  raised,  and  which  presses  upon 
the  attention  of  the  present  age  with  an  anxious  ear- 
nestness ; —  What  is  the  effect  on  human  character 
of  a  high  and  complicated  civilization  ?  Are  its  vast 
accumulations  of  commodities,  its  rapid  circulation  of 
activity  and  thought,  its  minute  division  of  employ- 
ments, its  close  interlacing  of  interests,  its  facilities  for 
class-organization,  to  be  looked  upon  with  joy  and 
gratulation,  as  so  many  triumphs  of  intelligence  and 
refinement  over  ignorance  and  barbarism  ;  or  with 
grief  and  consternation,  as  the  gathering  of  an  uncon- 
trollable and  aimless  power  destined,  like  the  mad 
Hercules,  to  destroy  the  offspring  of  its  strength  ?  The 
exulting  and  jubilant  feeling  on  this  matter  which 
prevailed  some  years  ago,  is  now  generally  replaced, 
I  believe,  in  thoughtful  minds,  by  a  more  sober  and 
even  melancholy  order  of  expectations.  The  change 
may  be  justified,  if  it  be  made  a  step,  not  to  passive 
despair,  but  to  the  faithful  and  energetic  performance 
of  a  new  class  of  social  duties.  Let  us  search  for 
some  principle  which  may  aid  in  the  solution  of  this 
great  problem. 

The  specific  effect  on  human  character  produced 
by  a  high  state  of  civilization  may  be  expressed  in  a 
single  phrase;  it  develops  the  self-consciousness  of 
men  to  an  intense  degree,  or,  to  borrow  the  venerable 
language  of  Scripture,  immeasurably  increases  their 
"  knowledge  of  good  and  evil."  This  indeed  arises 
necessarily  from  our  living  so  closely  in  the  presence 
of  each  other.  A  perfectly  solitary  being,  who  had  a 
whole  planet  to  himself,  would  remain,  I  suppose, 
forever  incapable  of  knowing  himself  and  reflecting 
upon  his  thoughts  and  actions.  He  would  continue, 


356  CHRISTIAN    SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 

like  other  creatures,  to  have  feeling  and  ideas,  but 
would  not  make  them  his  objects  and  bring  them 
under  his  Will.  This  human  peculiarity  would  re- 
main latent  in  him,  till  he  was  introduced  before 
the  face  of  some  kindred  being,  and  he  saw  his 
nature  reflected  in  another  mind.  Looking  into  the 
eyes  of  a  living  companion,  changing  with  laughter 
and  with  tears,  flashing  with  anger,  drooping  with 
sleep,  he  finds  the  mirror  of  himself;  the  passions 
of  his  inner  life  are  revealed  to  him  ;  and  he  becomes 
"a  person  instead  of  a  living  thing.  In  proportion  as 
society  collects  more  thickly  around  a  man,  this  prim- 
itive change  deepens  and  extends ;  the  unconscious, 
instinctive  life,  which  remains  predominant  in  savage 
tribes,  and  visible  enough  in  spare  populations  every- 
where, gradually  retires.  He  knows  all  about  his  appe- 
tites, and  how  to  serve  them ;  can  name  his  feelings, 
reign  them,  stifle  them;  can  manage  his  thoughts,  fly 
from  them,  conceal  them;  can  meditate  his  actions, 
link  them  into  a  system,  protect  them  from  interrupt- 
ing impulse,  and  direct  them  to  an  end;  can  go 
through  the  length  and  breadth  of  life  with  mind  gross- 
ly familiar  with  its  wonders,  or  reverently  studious 
of  its  wisdom ;  and  look  on  Death  with  the  eye  of  an 
undertaker,  or  through  the  tears  of  a  saint.  In  an  old 
and  artificial  community,  all  the  common  products  of 
experience  appear  stale  and  exhausted,  and  ingenuity 
is  plied  for  the  means  of  awakening  some  new  emotion. 
The  inmost  recesses  of  our  nature  are  curiously  ex- 
plored, and  its  most  sacred  feelings  submitted  to  the 
coolest  criticism,  and  brought  under  the  canons  of  art. 
The  self-consciousness  of  individuals  is  shared  by  so- 
ciety at  large ;  it  studies  itself,  talks  of  its  past,  is 
anxious  about  its  future;  becomes  aware  of  its  own 


CHRISTIAN    SELF-CONSCIOTJSNESS.  357 

mechanism,  and  tries  to  estimate  its  strength.  And 
with  a  universal  discussion  of  wide  social  problems, 
an  unparalleled  egoism  and  isolation  are  apt  to  seize 
upon  every  sect,  class,  and  nation. 

If  this  be  true,  then    we   must  admit  that  a  high 
civilization,  unfolds  the   characteristic  endowment  of 
our  nature ;  and  so  far,  may  be  said  to  raise  and  dig- 
nify it,  and  leave  far  behind  the  mere  animal  and 
instinctive  life   which    belongs   to   beings   of  lower 
grade.     The   most  ignorant  man   in    England   pos- 
sesses a  knowledge  of  good   and  evil,  and  a  various 
skill  in  commanding  them,  which  the  hoariest  patri- 
arch in  a  barbarian  village  would  look  upon  with  awe. 
It  is  only  however  in  the  Naturalist's  scale,  not  in 
the  Christian,  that  man  is  elevated  by  the  influences 
of  artificial  society.   He  becomes  a  well  marked  speci- 
men of  his  kind,  broadly  separated  from  other  races 
upon  earth  ;  but  how  he  ranks  among  spiritual  beings, 
— whether  he  approaches  the  confines  of  heaven,  or 
touches  the  verge  of  hell,  —  is  wholly  undecided  still. 
Superior  knowledge  of  good   and   evil  involves  no 
change  in  the  proportionate  love  of  them;  self-con- 
sciousness being  a  neutral  faculty,  the  condition  alike 
of  whatever  is  pure  and  noble,  and  of  all  that  is  most 
foul  and  mean;  the  ground  at  once  of  the  fidelity  of 
Abdiel  and  the  guilt  of  Lucifer.     Hence  it  is  that  the 
mere  progress   of  civilization   involves  no   spiritual 
advance,  and  miserably  disappoints  those  who  trust- 
ed that  it  was  to  deliver  men  from  the  yoke  of  their 
follies  and  their  sins.     Vast  as  is  the  spectacle  of  our 
material  magnificence,   and   intense  as   may   be   the 
traces  of  mental  vitality,  there  is  no  certain  decline  of 
selfishness  and  corruption  in  any  class ;   or  if  on  the 
right  hand  you  can  point  to  some  evil  extinguished, 


358  CHKISTIAN    SELF-CONSCIOUSXESS. 

on  the  left  there  springs  some  new  enormity  to 
balance  the  success.  How  many  are  there  who  base- 
ly avail  themselves  of  all  the  ease  and  luxury  of  our 
complicated  civilization,  compared  with  the  few  who 
feel  its  obligations,  and  take  up  its  work !  How  little 
security  do  the  most  practised  thought  and  refined 
scholarship  seem  to  afford  against  shameful  Jesuitry 
and  abject  superstition !  And  how  often  is  the  nimble 
intelligence  of  the  artisan  wholly  unproductive  of 
any  self-restraint  or  reverence  !  The  mere  cleverness 
indeed  of  the  modern  townsman,  derived  from  the 
heated  and  sensitive  atmosphere  around  him,  implies 
no  hardy  spiritual  life  within  him,  and  ensures  no 
moral  thoughtfulness  or  wisdom.  It  is  a  mere  apti- 
tude for  the  germination  of  ideas  of  any  sort ;  where- 
by flowers  of  Paradise  may  come  sprouting  up  without 
ripening  their  proper  fruits,  or  the  deadly  nightshade 
drop  its  poison  un perceived.  Intellectual  irritability 
may  leave  the  conscience  wholly  dead.  And  assured- 
ly only  that  knowledge  which  a  man  wins  for  himself 
by  the  spontaneous  efforts  of  his  own  mind  has  the 
proper  and  purifying  effect  of  truth  on  him,  and 
renders  his  nature  clearer  than  it  was  before. 

And  unhappily  this  self-acquired  knowledge  and 
faculty  are,  in  one  respect,  less  likely  to  be  found 
among  us  in  these  days  than  of  old.  The  direct  in- 
fluence of  occupation  is  less  and  less  favorable  to 
their  production.  Nothing  that  has  ever  been  ad- 
vanced by  economists  can  convince  me,  that  the 
extreme  division  of  employments,  which  characterizes 
modern  industrial  operations,  is  anything  but  deaden- 
ing and  unhealthy  to  the  mental  nature  of  those  en- 
gaged in  them.  To  spend  every  working  day  of  half 
or  the  whole  of  life,  not  in  a  craft  of  various  nicety 


CHRISTIAN    SELF-COXSCIOUSJfESS.  359 

and  skill,  but  in  a  solitary  process  of  a  single  manu- 
facture, in  tying  threads  or  pointing  pins,  can  assur- 
edly give  no  discipline  to  any  faculty,  unless  those  of 
muscular  alacrity  or  mental  patience ;  and  compared 
with  the  work  of  an  earlier  world,  I  should  as  little 
call  this  skill,  as  I  should  class  among  literary  men  a 
scribe  who  should  devote  his  time  to  crossing  £'s  and 
dotting  I's.  With  long  habit  the  monotony  of  such  a 
lot  may  cease  to  be  positively  felt.  But  it  taxes  no 
worthy  power,  it  enlists  no  natural  interest,  it  pre- 
sents only  vacancy  and  listlessness  to  the  thought, 
and  the  more  so,  as  the  work  is  another's  and  not 
the  laborer's  own.  The  occupation  does  not  educate 
the  man.  It  may  be  true,  in  point  of  fact,  that 
workers  of  this  class  are  as  intelligent  as  others. 
But  if  so,  this  is  owing  to  influences  extrinsic  to  the 
cause  on  which  I  dwell,  and  in  spite  of  it ;  especially 
to  their  residence  in  the  stimulant  atmosphere  of 
great  cities,  and  the  habit  of  association  with  large 
bodies  of  men.  And  this  intellectual  counteraction 
itself,  there  is  reason  to  fear,  is  purchased  at  the  cost 
of  vast  moral  dangers.  For,  in  proportion  as  men 
cease  to  have  an  intelligent  interest  in  their  work,  and 
go  through  it  with  the  weariness  of  a  necessary  task, 
do  they  quit  it  with  a  susceptibility  to  foreign  excite- 
ments, and  a  more  open  avidity  for  the  temptations 
of  the  passions ;  and  losing  the  even  glow  of  a  con- 
stant activity,  they  fall  under  fearful  inducement  to 
alternate  the  stagnant  blood  of  dulness  with  the 
throbbing  pulse  of  revelry. 

Who  then  can  be  so  blind  as  to  deny  the  dangers 
amid  which  we  live  ?  We  have  created  around  us  a 
scale  of  opportunity,  and  temptation,  and  risk,  fright- 
fully vast.  We  are  wholly  out  of  reach  of  the  narrow 


360  CHBISTIAN    SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 

safety  of  simple  and  instinctive  life.  We  stand  in  the 
presence  of  a  gigantic  amount  of  good  and  evil.  Yet 
we  have  not  stronger  spirits  to  bear  the  mightier" 
strain.  So  far  as  our  condition  forms  us,  we  are  less 
complete  men,  and  therefore  of  less  massive  stability, 
than  were  our  forefathers.  The  moral  structure  of  so- 
ciety partakes  of  the  character  of  those  huge  machines 
which  have  done  so  much  to  make  at  once  its  wealth 
and  weakness ;  each  man  being  but  as  a  screw  or 
pinion  of  the  whole,  locked  into  a  system  that  holds 
him  fast  or  whirls  him  on,  and  having  no  longer  a 
separate  symmetry  and  worth.  The  results,  indeed, 
which  are  turned  out  from  this  involuntary  co-opera- 
tion of  parts,  are  of  overwhelming  magnitude  and 
wonderful  variety.  Our  country  is  a  vast  congeries 
of  exaggerations.  Enormous  wealth  and  saddest 
poverty,  sumptuous  idleness  and  saddest  toil,  princely 
provison  for  learning,  and  the  most  degrading  igno- 
rance, a  large  amount  of  laborious  philanthropy,  but 
a  larger  of  unconquered  misery  and  sin,  subsist  side 
by  side,  and  terrify  us  by  the  preternatural  contrast 
of  brilliant  coloring  with  blackest  shade.  It  is  ap- 
palling to  think  of  the  moral  cost  (a  cost  most  need- 
less too)  at  which  England  has  become  materially 
great.  Do  you  found  that  greatness  on  the  culture  of 
the  soil  ?  Alas !  where  is  the  laborer  by  whose  hand 
it  has  been  tilled  ?  In  a  cabin  with  his  children, 
where  the  domestic  decencies  cannot  be,  and  where 
Christ,  did  he  enter,  might  give  his  pity,  but  could 
hardly  ask  obedience.  Or  do  you  point  rather  to  our 
mineral  wealth  ?  See  the  picture  which  has  scarcely 
ceased  to  be  true,  of  crawling  women  and  harnessed 
children,  of  whose  toil  this  glory  comes  ?  I  know  not 
which  is  most  Heathenish,  the  guilty  negligence  of 


CHRISTIAN    SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.  361 

our  lofty  men,  or  the  fearful  degradation  of  the  low. 
But  this  I  do  believe,  that  unless  some  holier  spirit 
dart  quickly  down  for  the  conversion  of  our  rich  and 
great,  put  into  them  a  wise  and  Christian  heart,  and 
dispose  them  to  sacrifices  never  dreamt  of  yet ;  our 
social  repentance  will  come  too  late,  and  we  shall  die 
with  our  Jerusalem,  seeing  only  the  image  of  a  tear- 
ful Christ,  and  hearing  the  words,  '  O  that  thou 
hadst  known,  at  least  in  this  thy  day,  the  things  that 
belong  to  thy  peace  ! ' 

Moreover,  we  live,  as  we  have  seen,  in  an  age  of 
excited  and  self-conscious  men.  And  in  all  minds 
awakened  and  reflective,  to  even  a  very  moderate 
degree,  there  arises  and  accumulates  a  secret  fund  of 
dissatisfaction ;  a  dark,  mysterious  speck  of  care 
upon  the  heart,  which  turns  to  a  point  of  explosive 
ruin  in  bad  men,  to  a  seed  of  fruitful  sorrow  with  the 
good.  The  natural  mind,  untouched  by  religious  wis- 
dom, always  refers  its  wants  and  miseries  to  outward 
things,  which  alone  it  strives  to  mend  and  change. 
So  this  hidden  discontent  leads  men  to  love  them- 
selves the  more,  and  quarrel  with  their  neighbors, 
until  they  become  Christians  in  soul ;  and  then  it 
shows  them  a  far  higher  truth,  and  leads  them  to  love 
their  neighbors  and  reproach  themselves.  The  strife 
and  struggle  which  are  inseparable  from  our  self-con- 
scious life,  are  directed  to  mutual  hate,  while  under 
the  guidance  of  self;  to  common  aspiration,  under 
the  discipline  of  Christ.  Who  can  doubt  that,  under 
our  present  spiritual  condition,  it  is  the  anarchy,  and 
not  the  love,  to  which  this  feeling  tends  ?  And  who 
would  not  pray  for  an  infusion  of  the  light  of  God  to 
paint  the  bow  of  peace  anJ  promise  on  the  cloud 
where  the  muffled  thunder  growls  ?  Oh  !  that  to  us, 
31 


362  CHRISTIAN    SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 

otherwise  than  to  Elijah  in  the  cave,  it  may  be  given 
to  hear  the  still  small  voice,  not  after,"  but  before,  the 
strong  wind,  the  earthquake,  and  the  fire. 

To  avert  the  dangers,  and  remedy  the  peculiar  evils 
of  our  social  condition,  many  conjoint  agencies  are 
doubtless  required.  But  there  is  not  one  whose  neg- 
lect offers  more  certain  peril,  whose  right  and  timely 
application  presents  more  reasonable  hope,  than  a 
Christian  training  for  the  new  generation  of  our 
people.  Could  this,  indeed,  be  universally  given, 
could  all  good  men  set  to  work  with  one  heart  and 
hand,  and  see  to  it  that  no  desert  spot  be  un- 
reclaimed, all  would  yet  be  well.  But,  alas !  we  are 
so  afraid  of  each  other's  doctrines,  that  we  cannot 
cure  each  other's  sins  ;  and  while  the  most  appalling 
evils  threaten  us,  and  more  than  once  the  symp- 
tomatic smoke  has  puffed  up  from  the  social  volcano, 
we  stand  round  the  crater  and  discuss  theology? 
Ah !  how  much  more  is  there  in  our  Christendom  of 
the  contentious  mind,  than  of  the  disciple's  pure  and 
unperverted  heart !  Which,  I  would  know,  is  the 
worse  evil,  an  actual  gin-shop,  or  a  possible  heresy  ? 
Yet  in  dread  of  the  latter,  we  cannot  unite  together 
in  the  only  means  of  putting  down  the  former.  How- 
ever, by  such  means  as  our  infirmities  still  leave  open, 
we  must  go  and  teach  this  people.  In  proportion  as 
their  occupations  educate  them  less,  and  their  circum- 
stances tempt  them  more,  a  direct  and  proposed  cul- 
ture must  be  provided  ;  —  a  culture  which  keeps  in 
view  the  great  primary  end  of  responsible  existence  ; 
which  looks  not  at  their  trade,  but  at  their  souls,  and 
brings  them  not  as  apt  servants  to  the  mill,  but  as 
holy  children  to  their  God.  Education  in  the  Chris- 
tian sense,  is  truly  everlasting ;  childhood  preparing 


CHRISTIAN    SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.  363 

for  maturity,  maturity  for  age,  and  the  whole  of  life 
for  death  and  Heaven.  The  early  training  of  the 
young  is  but  that  portion  of  this  series,  which  prepares 
for  self-government  and  the  exercise  of  Free-will 
within  the  limits  of  Christ's  law.  Doubtless  the 
responsibility  of  this  task  rests,  by  the  decree  of  Na- 
ture and  Providence,  with  the  parents  to  whom  the 
young  life  is  committed  as  a  trust ;  nor  will  it  ever 
have  settled  on  its  genuine  basis,  till  there  shall  exist, 
in  every  class,  an  effective  domestic  sentiment,  suffi- 
cient to  sustain  it.  But  amid  the  wide  decay  of  the 
old  and  healthful  parental  conscience,  it  becomes 
needful  to  awaken  a  wider  interest  in  the  work,  and 
to  call  upon  neighborhood  and  country  to  take  up  the 
neglected  office  of  the  home.  Nor  should  any  indi- 
vidual, or  any  family,  exempt  from  the  constant  cares 
of  subsistence,  be  held  to  have  discharged  obligations 
of  the  Christian  life,  till  they  freely  give  some  steady 
help  to  this  essential  work ;  and  provide  some  fitting 
care  for  the  neglected  child,  as  still  an  infant  disciple 
claimed  by  the  arms,  and  consecrated  by  the  benedic- 
tion, of  their  heavenly  Lord. 


XXIX. 

THE    UNCLOUDED    HEART. 
JOHN  v.  30. 

MT   JUDGMENT    IS    JUST,    BECAUSE    I   SEEK   NOT   MINE   OWN   WILL,    BUT 
THE   WILL  OF    THE    FATHER    WHICH    HATH    SENT    ME 

FOR  the  training  of  goodness,  the  ancient  reliance 
was  on  the  right  discipline  of  habit  and  affection ; 
the  modern  is  rather  on  illumination  of  the  under- 
standing. The  notion  extensively  prevails  that  vice, 
being  only  the  mistaken  pursuit  of  that  personal 
happiness  for  which  virtue  is  an  equal  but  more 
sagacious  aspirant,  is  a  blunder  of  the  intellect;  a 
defective  or  erroneous  view  of  things ;  and,  like  the 
optical  delusions  incident  to  weak  eyes,  to  be  cured 
by  use  of  the  most  approved  instruments  for  seeing 
clearly.  The  guilty  and  degraded  will,  it  is  said,  dif- 
fers from  the  pure  and  noble,  not  by  aiming  at  a  less 
innocent  end,  but  by  being  less  happy  in  its  choice  of 
means;  point  out  the  miscalculation,  instruct  it  to 
weigh  causes  with  greater  nicety  in  future;  and  you 
cannot  fail  to  promote  the  needful  reformation.  The 
sinner  is  but  the  most  deplorable  of  fools ;  and  if  you 
banish  folly,  you  extinguish  sin. 

This  prescription  for  the  advancement  of  human  ex- 
cellence possesses  an  apparent  simplicity,  which  gives 
it  a  great  attraction  to  some  minds.  All  the  varieties 
of  character  among  men  it  reduces  to  an  arrange- 


THE    UNCLOUDED    HEART. 


365 


ment  easily  understood ;  distributing  them  along  a 
single  line,  in  the  order  of  their  intelligence.  It  seems 
to  take  away  all  mystery  from  the  moral  motions, 
whose  rapidity  and  intensity  had  awed  and  startled 
us;  and  by  converting  them  into  plain  judgments  of 
the  intellect,  makes  them  the  voice  of  man  instead  of 
God.  Unhappily,  however,  the  value  of  this  tqmpt- 
ing  theory  disappears,  the  moment  we  seek  to  use  it. 
Let  its  most  ingenious  advocate  try  it  upon  the  miser, 
the  cheat,  the  insane  candidate  for  glory ;  let  him 
reason  with  them  on  their  ignorance  and  imbecility 
of  judgment,  expose  every  fallacy  of  self-justification, 
and  establish  against  them  an  unanswerable  case  of 
mistake ;  and  then  let  him  come  and  tell  us,  whether 
he  has  made  them  generous,  just  and  meek.  Per- 
haps he  will  confess  his  failure,  but  persevere  in 
ascribing  it  to  the  unhappy  state  of  his  pupils'  under- 
standing, rather  than  any  distinct  affection  of  their 
passions.  '  I  could  not  convince  them,'  he  will  say, 
'of  their  error;  or,  if  my  arguments  impressed  them 
at  the  moment,  the  persuasion  passed  away ;  and 
habit  proved  the  more  successful  advocate,  because 
it  was,  though  not  the  truer,  yet  the  more  impor- 
tunate.' But  were  not  your  appeals  just  and  for- 
cible, and  your  instruction  indisputably  true  ?  Then 
there  must  be  something  in  the  heart  where  evil 
passions  dwell,  that  baffles  the  chance  of  reason ; 
that  takes  from  evidence  its  natural  force,  and  gives 
to  error  an  unmerited  triumph.  And  what  advantage 
do  we  gain  by  representing  men  as  the  subjects,  and 
their  morality  as  truths,  of  the  pure  intellect,  if  it  be 
an  intellect  that  may  lose  its  distinguishing  function, 
and  become  inaccessible  to  just  persuasion  ?  What 
comfort  is  it  to  know  that  guilt  is  only  error,  if  it  be 
31* 


366  THE    UNCLOUDED   HEART. 

error  so  peculiar  as  to  be  insensible  to  the  merits 
of  the  most  unquestionable  proof?  Why  teJl  us 
that  right  and  wrong  are  but  the  love  of  happiness 
making  its  computations,  when  it  is  admitted  that 
passion  was  never  computed  out  of  the  heart,  and 
that  self-interest  itself  is  whiffed  away  by  the  tem- 
pest of  its  rage?  It  is  true,  that  you  have  only  to 
give  the  slave  of  guilty  passions  a  different  view  of 
the  objects  of  desire,  and  he  is  set  free  from  his 
miserable  thraldom.  It  is  equally  true,  that  you 
have  only  to  make  the  collapsed  paralytic  start  up 
and  run,  —  and  he  will  be  well. 

No  doubt,  the  weakest  reason  and  the  most  ungov- 
ernable desires  are  constantly  found  together.  But 
there  are  at  least  two  ways  of  reading  connected 
appearances  like  these.  The  attempt  to  resolve  all 
the  phenomena  of  character  into  a  condition  of  the 
understanding  is  a  futile  exaggeration.  The  great 
author  of  Christianity,  reversing  the  order  of  the  ex- 
planation, placed  the  truth  in  a  juster  point  of  view. 
He  well  knew  that  if,  sometimes,  because  the  reason 
is  darkened,  the  passions  are  awake,  it  more  often 
happens  that  because  the  passions  are  awake,  the 
reason  is  eclipsed.  To  him  it  could  not  but  be  clear, 
from  consciousness  itself,  that  pure  sympathies  make 
a  clear  intellect,  and  with  their  sweet  breath,  wonder- 
fully open  to  the  mind  new  perceptions  of  things 
heavenly.  While  auditors,  feeling  '  that  never  man 
spake  like  this  man,'  asked,  '  how  knoweth  he  letters, 
having  never  learned  ? '  Jesus  led  them  to  a  different 
explanation  of  his  wisdom.  '  My  judgment  is  just, 
because  I  seek  not  mine  own  will,  but  the  will  of  the 
Father  who  hath  sent  me.'  And  he  instructed  others 
how  to  gain  a  like  discernment  of  things  divine, 


THE    UNCLOUDED    HEART.  367 

when  he  said,  '  If  any  will  do  his  will,  he  shall  know 
of  the  doctrine,  whether  it  be  of  God,  or  whether  I 
speak  of  myself.'  The  words  express  a  universal 
truth.  Whatever  be  the  work  on  which  the  judgment 
may  be  engaged,  it  will  be  invariably  aided  by  the 
natural  sympathies  of  a  just,  disinterested  and  holy 
mind. 

Even  in  his  abstruser  toils,  these  are  often  the  wise 
man's  mightiest  power.  The  most  turbid  clouds  that 
darken  the  vision  of  reason  are  those  which  interest, 
and  fear,  and  ambition  spread  ;  and  these  the  pure 
affections  sweep  away.  They  give  to  the  soul  the 
unspeakable  freedom  of  just  intents  and  elevated 
trusts;  and  where  there  exist  no  complicated  aims,  no 
retarding  anxieties,  but  the  whole  absolute  energy  of 
a  mind  is  gathered  upon  the  search  of  truth,  it  is 
amazing  what  vast  achievements  may  be  made. 
How  often  will  a  child,  by  mere  force  of  uncon- 
sciousness and  simplicity,  penetrate  to  the  centre  of 
some  great  truth  with  a  startling  ease  and  directness. 
And  in  this  the  greatness  of  genius  is  like  the  power 
of  a  child;  it  is  as  much  moral  as  intellectual;  it 
arises  from  emotions  so  distinct  and  earnest  as  to 
secure  singleness  of  purpose  and  vivacity  of  expres- 
sion ;  from  some  absorbing  reverence  which  disen- 
thrals the  mind  from  lower  passions,  and  gives  it 
courage  to  be  true.  There  is  always  a  presumption 
that  a  pure-hearted  will  be  a  right-minded  man;  and 
it  is  delightful  to  see  such  a  one  stand  up  before  the 
ambitious  sophist,  and  dart  on  his  ingenuities  a  clear 
ray  of  conscience  that  scatters  them  like  mist.  The 
divine  light  of  a  good  mind  is  too  much  for  the 
mystifications  of  guilt.  'The  foolishness  of  God  is 
wiser  than  the  wisdom  of  men.' 


368  THE    UNCLOUDED    HEART. 

All  the  great  hindrances  to  impartiality  in  the 
quest  of  truth  have  obviously  their  seat  in  some  class 
of  selfish  feelings.  Interest,  promising  to  one  set  of 
opinions  emolument  and  honor,  and  to  their  opposite 
poverty  and  disgrace ;  or  passing  over  to  the  future 
world,  and  there  displaying  to  us  the  alternative  of 
absolute  blessedness  or  ruin,  —  crushes  the  natural 
justice  of  the  understanding,  and  offers  stupendous 
temptations  to  palter  with  evidence,  and  shuffle  in- 
convenient doubts  away.  No  inquirer  can  fix  a 
direct  and  clear-sighted  gaze  towards  truth,  who  is 
casting  side-glances  all  the  while  on  the  prospects  of 
his  soul.  Again,  the  excessive  eagerness  about  repu- 
tation produces  a  thousand  pitiable  distortions  of 
understanding.  In  one  it  takes  the  shape  of  a  deter- 
mination to  be  original  (which,  I  suppose,  never  befell 
any  man  by  deliberate  resolve),  and  so  extinguishes 
his  perception  of  all  ancient  excellence,  and  confines 
his  appreciation  to  his  own  obscurities  and  affecta- 
tions. In  another  it  passes  into  an  opposite  folly,  — 
the  pride  of  being  peculiarly  moderate  and  sound;  so 
he  dreads  eccentricities  far  more  than  falsehoods,  and 
weighs  proprieties,  instead  of  investigating  truths. 
And  what  is  the  partisanship  that  wearies  every 
good  man's  heart,  but  a  collection  of  selfish  feelings, 
fatal  to  all  the  equities  of  reason ;  a  gross  association 
of  the  idea  of  self  with  abstract  questions?  It  is  said 
to  be  of  service  in  keeping  alive  the  mental  activity 
of  the  community ;  but  how  poor  a  service,  when  the 
activity  consists  so  largely  in  the  ferment  of  bad  pas- 
sions ;  and  conducts  the  tranquil  tasks  of  reason  in 
the  spirit  of  a  gamester.  Argument,  in  such  case,  loses 
its  natural  power  of  persuasion,  and  operates  like  a 
weapon  of  vengeance ;  only  raising  higher  the  note  of 


THE    UNCLOUDED    HEART.  369 

triumph  in  those  who  wield  it,  and  irritating  instead 
of  convincing  the  minds  that  it  assails.  Indeed  it  is 
humilating  to  think  how  poor  a  pittance  of  reasoning 
conducts  the  gigantic  mutations  of  human  senti- 
ment; how  arguments,  at  which  a  quiet  understand- 
ing would  smile,  rise  to  grave  importance  in  the 
confusion  of  polemic  rage;  how  light  the  sophistries 
which  sway  the  tide  of  success  when  the  hosts  of 
party  wrestle  in  the  fight ;  how  foolish  the  sounds 
which  seem  to  award  possession  of  that  great  capitol 
of  opinion  which  overlooks  the  empire  of  the  world. 
Though,  however,  narrow  feelings  and  selfish  de- 
sires, intruding  on  the  province  of  the  understanding, 
prevent  its  judgments  from  being  just,  it  is  not  true 
that  their  simple  absence  constitutes  the  best  state 
for  speculative  research.  It  is  sometimes  said,  that, 
were  it  possible,  the  inquirer's  mind  should  be  abso- 
lutely emptied  of  every  desire,  and  be  exposed,  in 
entire  passiveness,  to  the  action  of  evidence  brought 
before  its  tribunal;  that  a  being  incapable  of  emotion, 
a  mere  machine  for  performing  logical  operations, 
would  be  the  most  efficient  discoverer.  But  surely 
his  impartiality,  however  perfect,  would  accomplish 
nothing  without  an  impulse;  intensity  of  intellectual 
action  is  needed,  as  well  as  clearness  of  intellectual 
view.  And  this  will  be  most  certainly  found,  not  in 
one  who  follows  the  light  without  deep  love  of  it ; 
not  in  one  who  simply  finds  it  a  personal  conveni- 
ence, and  desire  it  for  its  use;  not  even  in  one  who 
has  simply  a  relish  for  mental  occupations,  and  pro- 
longs them  from  pure  taste ;  but  in  him  who  traverses 
the  realm  of  thought,  as  if  '  seeking  the  will  of  One 
that  sent  him ; '  who  reverently  looks  on  the  features 
of  truth  as  on  the  face  of  God,  and  listens  to  its 


370  THE    UNCLOUDED    HEA.KT. 

accents  as  to  his  whispered  oracle ;  who  trusts  it  with 
a  'love  that  casteth  out  fear,'  and  feels  on  him  the 
blessed  light  of  Heaven,  when  bigots  pronounce  him 
in  a  dreadful  gloom. 

On  questions  of  practical  morals,  yet  more  emphat- 
ically than  on  subjects  of  speculative  research,  is  it 
true  that  pure  sympathies  produce  a  clear  intellect, 
and  that  his  judgments  are  most  likely  to  be  just, 
who  most  habitually  seek  the  will  of  the  eternal 
Father.  The  moral  habits  and  tastes  of  men  form 
their  opinions,  much  more  frequently  than  their  opin- 
ions form  their  habits;  —  so  that  often  their  theoret- 
ical sentiments  are  little  more  than  a  systematic 
self-defence  after  the  act,  and  afford  an  approximate 
index  to  the  character  of  themselves  and  the  society 
in  which  they  live.  The  positions  they  assume  hav- 
ing been  taken  up  first,  the  reasons  for  maintaining 
them  are  discovered  afterwards;  and  it  is  surprising 
to  observe  the  confidence  with  which  questions  of 
morals  are  discussed,  as  if  on  grounds  of  absolute 
philosophy,  when  every  quiet  observer  perceives  that 
the  alleged  premises  would  appear  ridiculous  except 
to  persons  already  possessed  of  the  conclusion. 
There  is  a  test,  —  imperfect  I  admit, —  by  which  to 
judge  whether  this  is  so  or  not,  and  to  disenchant 
the  imagination  of  the  mere  effect  of  usage.  Any 
moral  practice  which  admits  of  genuine  defence,  and 
has  a  permanent  foundation  in  nature  as  well  as  in 
custom,  might  surely  be  recommended  to  an  intelli- 
gent community  hitherto  ignorant  of  it,  and  success- 
fully urged  upon  their  deliberate  adoption.  Yet  how 
many  things  are  we  accustomed  to  palliate  or  up- 
hold, which  we  should  be  ashamed  to  submit  to  this 
criterion,  and  which  the  very  act  of  expounding  to 


THE    UNCLOUDED    HEA.BT.  371 

child  or  stranger  would  sufficiently  condemn !  In 
how  many  societies  are  the  misnamed  laws  of  honor, 
for  example,  still  justified,  as  if  they  satisfactorily 
met  the  conditions  of  a  problem  else  insoluble !  But 
if  they  be  so  sound  and  useful,  it  would  be  safe  to 
try  the  argument  in  their  behalf  on  those  to  whom 
the  whole  system  of  ideas  is  entirely  new ;  to  preach 
the  admirable  wisdom  of  the  duel  to  some  tribe  hav- 
ing only  such  civilization  as  may  be  attained  without 
it ;  and  proselytize  to  it  as  if  it  were  an  a  priori  in- 
vention of  philosophy.  If  the  apostles  of  the  world's 
law  feel  that  in  a  mental  clime  so  new,  they  would 
plead  in  vain,  should  they  not  suspect  that  they  may 
be  talking  absurdities  at  home,  which  have  no  force 
but  in  the  social  prepossessions  in  their  behalf?  It 
is  fearful  to  reflect,  indeed,  to  what  an  extent  our 
native  moral  sentiments  are  modified  by  the  atmo- 
sphere of  social  influence  perpetually  spread  around 
us ;  how  the  indications  of  the  unperverted  conscience 
may  become  obscured  and  lost;  and  a  fatal  blind- 
ness and  sleep  disqualify  it  for  its  waking  office.  It 
is  the  natural  mistake  of  just  minds  to  believe  it 
vigilant  and  incorruptible  as  God.  When  we  fix  our 
gaze  on  some  dread  crime ;  when  we  see,  it  may  be, 
the  outrages  of  a  tyrant's  profligacy  and  vengeance, 
crushing  the  life  of  resolute  purity,  or  consigning  to 
the  dungeon  the  virtue  which  it  fears ;  —  under  the 
impulse  of  poetic  justice,  we  imagine  the  perpetrator 
secretly  agonized  by  the  consciousness  of  guilt; 
writhing  at  midnight  beneath  the  lash  of  a  fiery 
remorse,  while  his  chained  victim  sleeps  the  light 
slumbers  of  innocence,  and  wakes  with  a  brow  cooled 
by  the  peace  within.  But  we  impose  upon  ourselves 
by  a  natural  illusion ;  we  conceive  a  wretch  to  judge 


372  THE    UNCLOUDED    HEART. 

himself  by  a  good  man's  conscience,  and  to  view  his 
own  deeds  in  a  light  which,  had  it  been  accessible  to 
him,  must  at  least  have  induced  a  hesitation  about 
their  commission.  No,  remorse  is  the  attribute,  not  of 
the  simply  guilty,  but  of  the  fallen;  it  is  the  bitter 
memory  which  sin,  yet  fresh,  retains  of  departed  good- 
ness; the  mind's  convulsive  grasp  on  the  retreating 
purities  of  the  past ;  and,  however  vehemently  it  pro- 
tests against  moral  deterioration,  the  consolidated  guilt 
of  habit  it  lets  alone.  Shall  any  one  then  assure  himself 
that  all  is  right,  because  he  is  clear  of  compunction  ? 
Shall  he  suffer  his  indulgent  years  to  ebb  idly  away, 
because  they  are  placid  as  the  summer  wave?  Shall 
he  thrust  aside  the  pleadings  of  those  who  would 
kindle  in  him  higher  thoughts  and  brace  him  to 
nobler  deeds,  —  by  saying  that  he  is  comfortable  and 
does  not  need  them  ?  If  so,  he  satisfies  himself  by 
the  same  argument  which  sophists  use  in  defence  of 
slavery;  —  the  creatures  are  easy,  have  been  seen  to 
laugh  merrily  by  day,  and  are  known  to  sleep  well  at 
night.  As  if  it  were  the  whole  life  of  man  to  have  a 
sleek  skin,  and  a  drowsy  brain.  As  if  any  existence 
upon  ideas  were  not  better  than  any  without  them  ; 
and  to  perceive  one's  misery  were  not  the  best  con- 
solation for  its  infliction ;  and  to  aspire  to  a  nobler 
existence,  though  with  faintest  hope,  to  chafe  against 
the  chain  that  binds  us,  though  it  gnaws  our  flesh, 
were  not  preferable  to  that  most  abject  condition  of 
humanity  in  which  conscious  degradation  becomes 
impossible.  We  should  beware,  then,  how  we  rely  on 
this  unconsciousness  as  a  security.  Of  every  low 
state  of  character,  this  apathy  towards  all  that  is 
above  it,  is  the  worst  symptom.  This  torpor  should 
not  lull,  but  rather  terrify.  When  this  motionless 


THE    UNCLOUDED    HEART.  373 

repose  reigns  within, —  this  breathless  atmosphere  of 
the  heart,  —  the  freshness  of  health  is  no  longer  there  ; 
it  is  the  pestilent  dreariness  of  the  waste  ;  the. awful 
silence  of  moral  death. 

In  its  judgment  of  human  character,  more  even  than 
in  matters  of  personal  morals,  a  mind  under  the 
governance  of  pure  and  disinterested  affections  will 
evince  the  clearest  insight.  He  would  be  the  most 
impartial  spectator  of  the  great  theatre  of  human  life, 
who  should  be  raised  into  a  sphere  of  pure  contem- 
plation above  its  scenes ;  to  a  position  external  to  its 
competitions,  its  disappointments,  its  rewards  ;  where 
the  voice  of  its  restless  multitudes  floated  but  in 
whispers,  articulate  enough  to  report  its  passions 
with  precision,  but  not  thrilling  enough  to  agitate  the 
spirit  by  their  power.  Such  an  observer,  acted  on 
himself  by  no  sympathies,  but  those  of  conscience, 
—  perfectly  perspective,  but  entirely  passionless, — 
would  behold  us  in  true  relations  and  proportions. 
The  pure  affections  create  a  mental  position  some- 
what similar  to  this.  They  still  the  confusion  of  the 
senses.  They  remove  all  motive  for  not  seeing  men 
and  life  exactly  as  they  are.  One  who  looks  on  the 
world  as  his  appointed  post  of  strenuous  duty,  and 
feels  on  him  the  divine  charge  to  leave  it  better  than 
he  found  it,  must  close  neither  eye  nor  heart  against 
any  of  its  ills.  And  as  for  its  good,  —  for  the  charities 
that  bless,  the  virtues  that  ennoble,  the  genius  that 
illuminates  our  human  lot,  —  delighting  in  them  all, 
he  discerns  them  all ;  bringing  to  him  as  they  do  the 
refreshment  of  a  generous  veneration,  what  tempta- 
tion has  he  to  doubt,  decry,  and  disbelieve  them  !  In 
a  mind  where  any  selfish  end  habitually  prevails, 
men  are  regarded  as  tools  ;  their  services  are  wanted, 

32 


374  THE    UNCLOUDED    HEART. 

and  their  complacency  must  be  secured  ;  they  are 
looked  upon  as  objects  of  management,  on  whom 
the  arts  of  influence  must  be  tried.  Hence  the  men- 
tal eye  is  insensibly  trained  to  a  sly  and  circumventing 
gaze  upon  our  fellows  ;  the  hand  of  cautious  power 
steals  forth,  and  makes  a  lever  of  their  weaknesses ; 
the  tongue  encouraged  by  its  first  experiments  of 
delicate  insincerity,  grows  rash  and  voluble  in  flattery. 
And  those  whom  a  man  is  conscious  of  praising  too 
much,  he  is  sure  to  value  too  little.  Accustomed  to 
speak  of  good  qualities  which  they  do  not  possess,  to 
invent  merits  of  which  they  are  empty,  his  mind  is 
always  dwelling  on  the  negation  of  excellence,  and 
growing  familiar  with  it  exclusively  as  an  object  of 
fiction  ;  till  at  length  he  ceases  to  believe  in  its  real- 
ity, and  attributes  to  everything  human  the  hollow- 
ness  which  he  practises  himself.  By  the  interposition 
of  his  own  selfishness,  the  nobler  half  of  human  na- 
ture undergoes  total  and  permanent  eclipse.  How 
should  it  be  otherwise  ?  For  who  would  spread  the 
tender  colors  of  the  soul  before  an  eye  like  his,  where 
they  can  bask  in  no  light  of  love  ?  Who  would  lay 
the  head  to  rest  on  a  bosom  cold  as  marble  ?  Will 
any  make  confession  of  an  unworldly  aspiration  to 
one,  who  keeps  always  ready  some  vile  interpretation 
of  whatever  seems  most  excellent ;  who  sees  in  the 
pious  only  traders  in  hypocrisy,  in  the  patriot  a  specu- 
lator in  power,  in  the  martyr  a  candidate  for  praise  ? 
All  that  is  beautiful  shrinks  from  the  presence  of  one 
who  delights  to  soil  it  with  instant  dust.  Oh,  how 
unblest  are  they  who  have  fallen  into  an  incapacity 
to  admire,  and  bid  adieu  to  the  solace  of  a  deep 
reverence  ;  who  can  take  up,  without  awe,  the  leaves 
scattered  on  the  earth  by  departed  genius,  or  read 


THE    UNCLOUDED    HEABT.  375 

of  the  struggles  of  liberty  without  enthusiasm,  or  fol- 
low the  good  in  their  pilgrimage  of  mercy,  with- 
out the  heavings  of  a  mighty  joy  !  No  grief  deserves 
such  pity  as  the  privations  of  a  scornful  heart. 

Those  who  seek  only  their  own,  will  lose,  then,  by 
natural  process,  the  faculty  of  judging  justly  respect- 
ing human  character.     They  are  liable  to  fall  into  no 
less  mistake  in  their  anticipation  of  those  changes  in 
society  which  are  brought  about  by  the  nobler  forces 
of  the  human   will.     It  is  happy  for  the  world,  that 
over  the  vision  of  its  greatest  enemies  their  own  self- 
ishness spreads  a  film,  concealing  from  them,  as  in 
judicial  blindness,  the  generous  powers  which  will  ef- 
fect their  overthrow.     Tyrants   and  self-seeking  rulers 
are,  by  nature,  Machiavelian   moralists ;   they   have 
no  faith  but  in  the  most  vulgar  incentives  to  action, 
and  are  familiar  with  no  engines  of  influence  but 
force  and  corruption.     Accustomed  to  rely  on  these, 
they  know  not  that  there  are  emergencies,  in  which 
even   a   herd   of  slaves   may   be   inspired   with   an 
enthusiasm  that  makes  such  implements  of  no  avail ; 
—  when  high  sentiments  of  social  justice,  or  aspira- 
tions towards  an  invisible  God,  vibrate  through  the 
dull  clay  of  ordinary  men.     Thus,  often  has  the  pam- 
pered despot  been  blinded  to  his  fate,  and  led  un- 
conscious on,  like  a  decorated  and  sportive  victim,  to 
the  sacrificial  altar  of  a  people's  indignation.    In  spite 
of  all  his  vigilance,  conspiracy,  conducted  by  lean  and 
praying  patriots,  has  gone  unnoticed  beneath  his  very 
eyes.     While  the  sunshine  smiles  upon   his   palace, 
and  glances  from  the  swords  of  faithful  troops,  he 
despises  the  gathering  cloud  of  a  nation's  frown  ;  till 
suddenly  the  tempest  bursts  upon  the  hills,  and  the 
heavy  tramp,  as  of  the  men  of  toil,  thunders  on  the 


376  THE    UNCLOUDED    HEART. 

ground;  and  after  a  flash  of  vented  wrath,  the  vet- 
erans and  their  leader  lay  low  upon  the  field,  and  the 
thanksgiving  of  the  free  goes  up  unto  a  sky  serene. 
Thus  it  is  of  the  very  nature  of  guilty  power  to  be 
surprised  by  the  apparition  of  high-minded  virtue  in 
a  people.  And  though  the  resistance  it  offers  to  the 
demands  of  conscience  may,  on  this  very  account,  be 
the  more  exasperated,  and  the  vindication  of  an  ab- 
stract right,  like  that  of  free  worship,  may  cost  a 
country  the  life  of  her  best  sons,  we  may  yet  be  per- 
mitted to  rejoice  at  the  infatuation  of  selfish  rule ; 
for  even  the  sanguinary  triumph  of  a  great  and 
righteous  principle  is  often  better  than  the  sly  and 
bloodless  ascendancy  of  a  bad  one.  War,  with  all 
its  horrors,  may  be  half  forgotten  in  two  generations  ; 
but  the  rights  which  it  may  establish  may  give  the 
causes  of  perennial  peace.  Men,  at  the  best,  must 
die  as  the  grass;  but  the  principles  of  justice  are 
blessings  for  evermore. 

The  selfish,  then,  in  perpetually  seeking  their  own 
will,  and  contemplating  mankind  chiefly  as  possible 
instruments  for  its  accomplishment,  necessarily  over- 
look the  best  elements  of  our  nature,  and  form  judg- 
ments that  are  not  just  of  human  character,  and  its 
collective  effects  on  the  condition  of  the  world. 
Moreover,  while  selfishness  makes  some  men  tools,  it 
finds  in  others  rivals;  and  under  the  form  of  jealousy, 
draws  another  cloud  over  the  judgment,  and  hides 
from  it  all  that  is  fairest  in  kindred  minds.  He  that 
cannot  enjoy,  with  genuine  exultation,  the  reputation 
of  another,  and  admire  with  tranquil  spirit  the  excel- 
lence that  borders  on  his  own,  loses  the  best  joy  of 
a  good  heart.  To  the  very  merits  which,  from  being 
most  akin  to  his  own,  he  is  most  fitted  to  appreciate, 


THE    UNCLOUDED    HEART.  377 

he  becomes  insensible;  and  a  bitter  poison  drops  into 
the  fountains  of  his  most  generous  peace.  There  is 
no  more  melancholy  sight,  than  that  of  a  mind,  other- 
wise great,  succumbing  beneath  a  mean  and  fretful 
passion  like  this ;  indulging  in  petty  cavils  at  worth, 
before  which  he  should  lead  on  the  multitude  to  bend 
the  knee;  so  visibly  greedy  of  other's  praise,  that  the 
most  vulgar  observer  laughs  to  think  that  the  great 
man  is  just  like  himself.  It  was  a  grief,  like  an  abso- 
lute bereavement,  to  find  that  our  own  Newton,  who 
should  have  lifted  a  brow  as  pure  and  smooth  as  the 
heavens  he  interpreted,  and  have  greeted  all  that 
was  good  beneath  them  with  a  smile  of  god-like 
benediction,  could  tease  a  brother  laborer,  like  Flam- 
stead,  and  shrivel  up  his  temper  into  peevishness, 
and  be  driven  hither  and  thither  by  trivial  suspicions, 
like  a  blind  giant  led  about  by  a  little  child.  Let  us 
hope,  what  indeed  there  is  some  reason  to  believe,  that 
all  this  was  rather  tremulousness  of  shattered  nerves, 
than  the  perturbations  of  the  native  mind.  Yet  is  it 
sad  to  have  even  to  make  excuse  for  such  as  he. 

Our  judgments  of  human  character  and  relations 
will  not  be  right,  unless  our  sympathies  be  not  dis- 
interested only,  but  pure.  The  moral  feelings  must 
transcend  the  social ;  the  sense  of  duty  be  stronger 
than  the  instincts  of  affection.  In  addition  to  the 
negative  qualification  of  not  seeking  our  own  will, 
we  must  have  the  positive  one  of  seeking  the  will  of 
the  Father  who  is  in  heaven.  The  partialities  of  the 
affections  are  nobler  every  way  than  those  of  self- 
love;  but  they  are  partialities  still;  and  while  they 
make  our  judgments  merciful,  may  prevent  their  be- 
ing just,  They  may  bewilder  our  moral  perceptions, 
and  in,  pure  tenderness  for  the  guilty,  seduce  us  to 
23* 


378  THE    UNCLOUDED    HEAKT. 

think  lightly  of  the  guilt.  There  are  in  life  few 
temptations  so  severe  as  those  which  our  human 
love  may  thus  offer  to  our  conscience.  If,  for  ex- 
ample, children  around  a  mother's  knee  betray  their 
first  unanswerable  suspicion  of  their  father's  vices, 
and  urge  her  with  wondering  questions  which  she 
has  so  long  dreaded  to  hear,  that  press  hard  upon  his 
guilt ;  what  is  she  to  do  ?  Is  she  to  hide  the  anguish 
that  trembles  on  her  features,  and,  in  fidelity  to  him, 
be  for  the  first  time  untrue  to  them  ?  Is  she  to  say 
the  evil  thing  of  him  for  whom  she  lives,  and  make 
him  as  a  byword  and  a  warning  to  his  children's 
lips  ?  '  And  yet,  is  she  to  take  it  on  herself  to  soil  the 
purity  and  simplicity  of  their  moral  perceptions,  and 
blow,  with  the  foul  breath  of  falsehood,  on  the  lamp 
of  God  within  their  hearts  ?  Her  first  duty  is,  doubt- 
less, to  the  sanctities  of  their  young  minds ;  but  so 
hard  a  lot  forces  us  to  think,  how  dreadful  is  the 
guilt  that  makes  a  contradiction  between  the  sym- 
pathies of  virtue  and  of  home,  and  turns  into  a  sin 
the  natural  mercy  of  disinterested  love. 

Whatever,  then,  be  the  office  required  of  the  judg- 
ment; whether  to  seek  truth  along  difficult  ways,  or, 
amid  the  sophistries  of  custom,  to  interpret  our  own 
responsibilities  ;  whether  it  is  invited  to  the  generous 
appreciation  of  excellence,  or  summoned  to  the  stem 
duties  of  disapprobation  and  rebuke;  he  only  who 
can  abandon  his  own  will,  and  seek  that  of  the 
Father  in  heaven,  will  either  discern  his  position 
clearly,  or  discharge  its  obligations  with  simplicity 
and  courage.  Nor  will  this  clearness  of  view  and 
directness  of  aim  be  likely  to  desert  him  in  the  greater 
emergencies  of  life.  Then  it  is  that  meaner  principles 
of  action,  all  mere  personal  desires,  collapse  in  weak- 


THE    UNCLOUDED    HEART.  379 

ness  and  bewilderment.  In  times  of  danger,  where 
it  is  needful  to  risk  something  or  lose  everything, 
men,  possessed  of  no  higher  inspiration,  lose  their 
presence  of  mind;  and  while  they  stand  in  timid 
calculation,  the  one  only  moment  of  faithful  duty 
slips  away.  They  will  profess  perhaps  to  have  been 
overpowered  by  the  sense  of  their  responsibility;  — 
an  unconscious  acknowledgment  of  the  confusion 
into  which  all  self-regarding  feelings  throw  the  mind; 
for  no  man  truly  earnest  about  an  object,  critically 
pauses  or  turns  aside  to  examine  how  he  is  acquit- 
ting himself.  No !  great  as  are  the  achievements  of 
inferior  principles  of  action,  —  the  love  of  power,  the 
pursuit  of  glory,  —  the  only  heroism,  fitted  for  the 
last  extremity  of  circumstance,  is  that  of  disinterested 
Duty.  Others  may  skilfully  and  firmly  use  up  their 
outward  resources  to  the  last;  but  the  Christian  hero, 
when  all  these  are  gone,  has  yet  to  spend  himself. 


XXX. 

'HELP    THOU    MINE    UNBELIEF.' 
MARK  ix.  24. 

LORD,    I   BELIEVE  ;     HELP   THOU   MINE   UNBELIEF. 

THAT  this  is  an  age  most  sensitive  as  to  its  belief, 
is  evident  on  the  slightest  inspection  of  its  moral  phy- 
siognomy. A  profound  curiosity  is  awakened  re- 
specting the  foundations  of  faith,  and  the  proper 
treatment  of  those  high  problems  which  religion  un- 
dertakes to  solve.  An  unexampled  proportion  of  our 
new  literature  is  theological ;  of  our  new  buildings, 
ecclesiastical;  of  our  current  conversation,  on  the 
condition  and  prospects  of  sects.  The  social  move- 
ments which  are  watched  with  the  most  anxiety  on 
the  one  hand,  and.  hope  on  the  other,  are  recent 
organizations  of  religious  sympathy  and  opinion. 
Even  the  interests  of  industry  and  commerce  find, 
for  the  moment,  rival  attractions  to  dispute  their 
omnipotence;  and  the  church  is  almost  a  balance  for 
the  exchange.  A  converted  clergyman  is  as  interest- 
ing as  an  apostate  statesman ;  a  visit  to  Rome,  as  a 
mission  to  Washington ;  a  heresy  from  Germany,  as 
a  protocol  from  Paris ;  and  a  new  baptism  is  no  less 
the  theme  of  talk  than  a  new  tariff.  If  theological 
gossip  were  the  measure  of  religious  faith  we  should 
be  the  devoutest  of  all  human  generations. 


HELP  THOU  MINE  UNBELIEF.  381 

Yet  with  all  this  currency  of  holy  words,  rarely  I 
believe  has  there  been  a  scantier  exchange  of  holy 
thought.  We  do  not  meet,  eye  to  eye,  and  heart  to 
heart,  and  say,  with  bosomed  breath,  '  Lo,  God  is 
here ! '  But,  rather,  with  quick  observant  glance, 
and  loud  harsh  voice,  we  notice  the  posture  of  others, 
and  discuss  the  things  they  say ;  and  go  round  like  a 
patrol  to  look  in  upon  the  world  at  prayers.  The 
talk  is  all  critical,  about  the  length  or  shortness  of 
some  one's  creed,  the  warmth  or  coldness  of  a  peo- 
ple's worship.  It  tells  you  what  each  church  thinks 
of  all  its  neighbors,  and  repeats  to  you  the  image  of 
Christendom  in  every  phase.  But  flitting  from  image 
to  image,  we  nowhere  light  upon  the  reality.  We 
stand  in  one  another's  presence,  like  so  many  mir- 
rors ranged  around  empty  space ;  turning  to  each, 
you  see  only  a  distorted  grouping  of  all  the  rest; 
which  being  gone,  it  would  be  evident  at  once,  that 
that  polished  face  could  show  merely  vacancy  with- 
out a  trace  of  God.  Of  old,  when  lived  the  saints 
and  prophets  whose  names  we  take  in  vain,  the 
language  of  religion  was  itself  the  very  incense  that 
rose  from  burning,  fragrant  souls  to  heaven;  now,  it 
does  but  analyze  the  smoke,  and  explain  of  what 
chemistry  it  comes.  Christ  '  came  to  bring  fire  upon 
earth,'  and  his  disciples,  after  eighteen  centuries,  are 
discussing  the  best  patent  match  to  get  it  kindled! 

There  is  one  feature  in  the  professions  of  the  pre- 
sent times,  as  compared  with  past,  on  which  it  is  im- 
possible to  reflect  without  astonishment.  There  is 
everywhere  the  sharpest  discernment  of  unbelief  in 
others,  with  an  entire  freedom  from  it  in  one's  self. 
The  critic,  if  you  will  only  go  round  with  him,  can 
show  you  how  it  is  lurking  here  and  there.  He 


382  HELP    THOIT    MINE    UNBELIEF. 

keeps  a  list  of  all  that  his  neighbors  do  not  believe. 
Through  the  powerful  glass  of  his  suspicions  he  can 
make  you  aware  of  the  nicest  shades  of  heresy ;  and 
from  writers  who  open  new  veins  of  thought,  can 
pick  out  passages  so  dreadful  as  to  constitute  a  kind 
of  infidel  anthology.  From  whatever  class  you. 
choose  your  guide,  this  is  what  he  will  point  out  to 
you.  Yet  if  you  turn  round  and  say,  '  And  now,  good 
friend,  what  of  thine  own  faith  ? '  you  will  be  delight- 
ed to  find  that  it  has  altogether  escaped  the  universal 
malady ;  it  has  never  had  a  shake ;  or,  if  ever  ailing, 
has  long  got  up  its  good  looks,  and  remains  quite 
sound  and  firm.  Trust,  in  short,  the  churches'  report 
of  one  another,  and  godlessness  is  universal;  trust 
their  account  of  themselves,  and  scepticism  is  extinct. 
Nobody  hesitates  about  anything  which  it  is  respect- 
able to  hold;  and  the  clearest  atmosphere  of  certainty 
overarches  every  life,  and  opens  a  heaven  undarkened 
by  a  doubt.  And  who  are  these  men,  before  whom 
the  universe  is  so  transparent;  for  whom  the  veil  of 
mystery  is  all  withdrawn,  or  at  least  hides  no  awful 
possibilities?  who  are  always  ready  to  say,  '  Lord, 
I  believe ! '  but  would  look  askance  at  the  brother 
who  should  meekly  respond,  '  Help  thou  mine  un- 
belief! '  —  Smooth,  .easy  men,  with  broad  acres  in  the 
country,  or  heavy  tonnage  on  the  sea;  with  good 
standing  in  their  profession,  or  good  custom  at  their 
shop;  living  a  life  so  rounded  with  comfort,  and 
showing  a  mind  so  content  to  repose  on  it,  that, 
while  rents  and  freights  keep  up,  you  cannot  fancy 
they  would  much  feel  the  loss  of  God ;  and  to  part 
with  the  reversion  of  heaven  would  hardly  affect 
them  like  the  news  of  a  large  bad  debt.  They  be- 
lieve soundly,  in  the  same  way  that  they  dress  neat- 


HELP    THOU     MIXE    UNBELIEF.  383 

ly;  it  no  more  occurs  to  them  to  question  their 
habitual  creed,  than  to  think  in  the  morning  whether 
they  shall  put  on  a  toga  or  a  coat;  it  is  a  matter  of 
course,  that  the  proprieties  be  observed,  and  things 
that  are  settled  for  us  be  left  untouched.  Besides, 
what  could  be  done  with  the  'common  people,'  if  it 
were  not  for  God  ? 

Now  from  this  easy  faith,  sitting  so  light  upon  our 
modern  men,  I  turn  to  the  old  Puritan,  and  am 
startled  by  the  contrast.  However  much  you  may 
dislike  his  uncouth  looks,  and  be  offended  with  his 
whining  voice,  he  is  not  a  man  without  religion;  —  a 
pity,  it  may  be,  that  he  has  taken  the  holiness  and 
left  the  beauty  of  it.  Missing  it  however  in  his  person 
and  in  his  speech,  you  find  it  penetrating  his  life,  and 
shaping  it  to  high  ends  of  truth  and  right.  He  can 
act  and  suffer  for  God's  sake ;  can  stand  loose  from 
the  delusions  of  property,  —  say  that  nothing  is  his 
own,  —  and  occupy  his  place  as  a  fiduciary  fief  from 
the  Lord  Paramount  of  all ;  can  despise  gaudy  ini- 
quity, and  see  to  the  heart  of  every  gilded  flattery  ;  — 
can  insist  on  veracity  in  the  council,  and  simplicity 
in  the  church; — feel  the  Omniscient  eye  on  his 
state  paper  as  he  writes;  and  the  Eternal  Spirit 
directing  the  course  his  persecuted  step  shall  take. 
Yet  look  into  this  man's  diary,  and  stand  by  and 
overhear  his  prayers.  He  loudly  bewails  his  unbelief; 
— confesses  a  heart  chilled  with  the  very  shadow  of 
death ;  —  complains  that  the  Most  High  has  hid  his 
face  from  him ;  and  with  tears  and  protestations  calls 
on  the  spirit  of  Christ  to  exorcise  the  demons  of 
doubt  that  are  grappling  with  his  soul.  Surely  this 
is  a  strange  thing.  Here  is  a  man  plainly  living  for 
sublime  ends,  beyond  the  baubles  of  this  world;  a 


384  HELP    THOU    MINE    UNBELIEF. 

man  who  has  got  fear  and  pain  beneath  his  feet;  who 
welcomes  self-denial,  as  an  angel  of  the  way,  and 
watches  every  indulgence  as  a  traitor  offering  the 
kiss; — to  whom  the  purest  human  love  appears  a 
snare  tempting  him  to  linger  here;  —  who  walks  the 
earth,  as  in  the  outer  fringe  of  the  beatific  vision  ; 
and  his  cry  is,  '  Help  thou  mine  unbelief! '  And  here 
are  we,  strangers  to  wrestlings  such  as  his;  who  sleep 
soundly  by  nights,  and  manage  prosperously  by  day ; 
whose  grand  care  is  to  get  a  living,  rather  than  to  live, 
and  to  cure  by  rule  the  health  impaired  by  luxury; 
—  we,  to  whom  the  earth  answers  well  enough  as  a 
kitchen,  a  parlor,  an  office,  or  a  theatre,  but  hardly  as 
a  watch-tower  of  contemplation,  or  a  holy  of  holies 
for  the  oracles  of  God  ; —  we  can  stand  up,  and  have 
the  assurance  to  say,  '  Lord !  we  believe ! ' 

The  difference  between  these  two  states  of  mind 
does  not  require  that  we  should  charge  either  of  them 
with  hypocrisy.  There  is  truth  in  the  professions  of 
them  both  ;  truth  enough  to  vindicate  their  veracity, 
though  not  to  equalize  their  worth.  The  unbeliever  in 
the  one  case  and  the  believer  in  the  other,  are  meas- 
ured off  from  a  different  scale ;  our  fathers  looking 
up  to  the  faith  they  ought  to  gain,  their  children  look- 
ing down  to  the  faith  they  have  yet  to  lose.  The 
former  had  so  lofty  a  standard,  that  every  thought 
beneath  the  summit-level  was  reckoned  to  their 
shame ;  the  latter  have  so  low  a  standard,  that  all 
above  the  dead  level  at  the  base  of  life  is  counted  to 
their  praise.  Nor  is  this  at.  all  inconceivable,  even 
though  we  were  to  reduce  all  religion  to  a  single 
article  of  faith.  To  me,  I  confess,  it  seems  a  very 
considerable  thing,  just  to  believe  in  God  ;  —  difficult 
indeed  to  avoid  honestly,  but  not  easy  to  accomplish 


HELP  THOU  MINE  UNBELIEF.  385 

worthily,  and  impossible  to  compass  perfectly  ;  —  a 
thing  not.  lightly  to  be  professed,  but  rather  humbly 
to  be  sought;  not  to  be  found  at  the  end  of  any 
syllogism,  but  in  the  inmost  fountains  of  purity  and 
affection  ;  —  not  the  sudden  gift  of  intellect,  but  to  be 
earned  by  a  loving  and  brave  life.  It  is  indeed  the 
greatest  thing  allowed  to  mankind,  —  the  germ  of 
every  lesser  greatness  ;  and  he  who  can  say,  '  I  have 
faith  in  the  Almighty,'  makes  a  higher  boast  than  if 
he  could  declare,  '  the  Mediterranean  is  my  garden, 
and  mine  is  every  branch  that  waves  upon  its  shores, 
from  the  cedars  of  Lebanon  to  the  pine  upon  the 
Alps.'  How  often  in  the  stifling  heat  and  press  of  life, 
when  trivial  cares  rise  with  dry  and  dusty  cloud  to  shut 
us  in,  do  we  wholly  lose  our  place  in  the  great  calm 
of  God,  and  fret  as  if  there  were  no  Infinite  Reason 
embracing  the  vortex  of  the  world!  In  loneliness 
and  exhaustion,  when  the  spirits  are  weak,  and  the 
crush  of  circumstance  is  strong  ;  —  when  comrades 
rest  and  sleep,  we  must  toil  and  watch  ;  —  when  the 
love  of  friends  grows  cold,  and  the  warm  light  of 
youth  is  quenched,  and  the  promises  of  years  seem 
broken,  and  hope  has  but  one  chapter  more ;  —  how 
little  do  we  think,  as  the  boughs  drip  sadly  with  all 
this  night  rain,  that  we  lodge  in  Eden  still,  where  the 
voice  of  the  Lord  God  rustles  in  the  trees,  and  be- 
speaks the  blossom  and  the  fruit  that  can  only  spring 
from  tears  !  Fear,  too,  in  every  form  except  the  fear 
of  sin,  is  a  genuine  Atheism.  The  very  child  knows 
that ;  for  if  a  terror  comes  on  him  because  he  is  in 
the  field  alone  by  night,  he  chides  himself  for  his 
false  heart ;  stops  and  looks  "tranquilly  around ;  re- 
laxes the  rigid  limbs,  and  lets  go  the  stifled  breath  ; 
putting  forth  a  thought  into  the  Great  Presence,  and 
33 


386  HELP    THOTT    MINE  UNBELIEF. 

drawing  a  holy  quiet  from  the  stars.  And  through  all 
manhood's  fears,  no  one  loses  his  presence  of  mind, 
who  has  not  lost  the  presence  of  his  God.  In  the 
battle-field,  where  Justice  sometimes  makes  appeal  to 
the  Lord  of  Hosts;  in  the  shipwreck,"  where  death 
seizes  the  storm  as  his  trumpet,  and  with  the  light- 
ning as  his  banner,  comes  streaming  down  the  sky  ; 
in  courts  of  sacerdotal  Inquisition,  where  the  brand- 
ing-iron is  hot,  and  instruments  of  torture  tempt  the 
lie ;  in  the  careless  world,  where  prosperity  is  wor- 
shipped, and  nice  scruples  are  laughed  down  ;  in  the 
sleepy  church,  which  can  wink  at  oppression,  and 
give  comfort  to  unrighteous  Mammon,  and  cover 
with  obloquy  the  heroes  of  God's  truth ;  —  no  man 
could  sink  into  an  unworthy  thing,  did  he  keep  with- 
in his  everlasting  fortress,  instead  of  rushing  unshel- 
tered into  the  wild. 

There  is  then  every  gradation  even  of  this  simple 
faith,  spreading  over  a  range  quite  indefinite.  Only 
by  a  reference  to  its  two  extremes  can  we  describe 
the  position  of  each  mind  and  of  each  age.  Com- 
plete belief  is  attained,  when  God  is  realized  as  much 
in  the  present  as  in  the  past.  Complete  unbelief, 
when  God  is  excluded  from  the  past  as  much  as 
from  the  present.  Measuring  from  this  lowest  limit, 
we  are  certainly  in  a  state  of  imperfect  Atheism.  We 
do  not  negative  as  yet  the  sanctities  of  old  ;  we  only 
deny  the  inspirations  of  to-day.  We  receive  certain 
ages  of  the  bygone  world,  as  the  real  centres  of  Divine 
activity,  —  the  sole  witnesses  of  creation  and  of  mira- 
cles, the  happy  points  where  Heaven  vouchsafed  to 
commune  with  earth.  •  They  lie  in  our  imagination, 
like  brilliant  islands  rising  distant  in  the  seas  of  Time ; 
vainly  dashed  by  the  dark  waters  of  human  history  ; 


HELP  THOU  MINE  UNBELIEF.  387 

and  lighted  by  a  glory-column  from  above,  piercing 
the  leaden  heavens  that  elsewhere  overhang  the 
waste.  There  in  old  Palestine,  AVC  think,  the  august 
voice  broke  for  a  moment  its  eternal  silence.  There, 
upon  the  mountains,  was  a  murmur  more  than  of  the 
wind;  and  in  the  air  a  thunder  grown  articulate  ;  and 
on  the  grass  a  dew  of  fresher  beauty  ;  and  in  the  lakes 
a  docile  listening  look,  as  if  conscious  of  a  Presence 
higher  than  the  night's.  In  this  retrospect,  it  will  not 
be  denied,  lies  the  ground  of  our  prevalent  religion  ; 
it  contains  the  strength  of  our  case ;  our  assurance  of 
divine  things  refers  pre-eminently  thither,  and  scarcely 
at  all  to  any  more  recent  age.  '  The  men  in  those 
days '  (we  virtually  say)  '  had  the  best  reasons  for 
believing  and  recognizing  God.  Had  we  too  been 
there,  we  should  have  known  for  ourselves,  and  have 
shared  the  great  fear  and  faith  that  fell  on  all.  But 
as  we  are  placed  afar  off  and  have  the  sacredness  at 
second  hand,  we  must  take  their  reasons  upon  trust, 
having  none  that  are  worth  much  of  our  own.'  Our 
faith,  therefore,  is  not  personal,  but  testimonial  ;  it  is 
an  hypothesis,  a  tradition.  It  thinks  within  itself,  '  if 
we  had  stood  where  Moses  was,  and  travelled  at  the 
right  hand  of  Paul,  we  should  have  felt  as  they.' 
And  this  justification  of  their  ancient  state  of  mind 
makes  the  substance  of  our  belief  to-day.  And  with 
like  view  do  we  turn  our  gaze  upon  the  future.  That 
also  spreads  before  us  radiant  with  a  light  divine. 
There  we  shall  find  better  reasons  for  our  faith  than 
meet  us  here ;  an  audience-hall  of  the  Most  High 
where  his  spirit  may  be  felt ;  a  clear  touch  of  his 
living  presence,  glowing  through  our  thought  with 
conscious  truth,  and  spreading  through  our  hearts  a 
saintly  love,  denied  us  in  this  court  of  exile.  And  so 


388  HELP    THOU    MINE   UNBELIEF. 

it  happens,  that  ages  gone,  and  ages  coming,  absorb 
from  us  the  whole  reality  of  God,  and  leave  the  life 
on  which  we  stand  an  atheistic  death.  The  heaven 
that  spans  us  touches  the  earth  on  the  right  hand  and 
the  left,  at  an  horizon  we  cannot  reach,  but  keeps  its 
infinite  zenith-distance  over  head.  We  believe  in 
One  who  looks  at  us,  but  not  in  One  who  lives  with 
us.  We  are  in  the  house  he  built ;  but  we  work  in 
it  alone,  for  he  has  gone  up  among  the  hills,  and  will 
only  come  to  fetch  us  by-and-by.  And  it  is  no  won- 
der, that  in  a  banishment  like  this,  our  worship  loses 
its  immediate  reality,  and  prays  no  more  with  a 
strong  heart.  It  is  not  bathed  in  the  flowing  tides  of 
Deity,  but  keeps  dry  on  the  strand  from  which  he  has 
ebbed  away.  If  ever  it  says  '  Lo  !  God  is  here  ! '  it 
instantly  belies  itself,  by  drawing  out  the  telescope  of 
history  to  look  for  him.  It  is  not  a  communion  face 
to  face,  wherein  he  is  near  to  us  as  the  light  upon  our 
eye  or  the  sorrow  on  our  hearts.  It  has  become  a 
Commemoration,  telling  what  once  he  was  to  happier 
spirits  of  our  race,  and  how  grateful  we  are  for  the 
dear  old  messages  that  faintly  reach  our  ear,  how  we 
will  cherish  the  last  remnant  of  that  precious  and 
only  sure  memorial,  —  the  fragile  and  consecrated 
link  between  his  sphere  and  ours.  Thus  our  worship 
is  a  monument  of  absent  realities,  and  serves  at  best 
but  to  keep  alive,  like  an  anniversary,  the  remem- 
brance of  things  else  fading  in  the  distance.  Or  else, 
if  we  direct  our  face  the  other  way,  and  look  towards 
the  future,  we  throw  our  prayers  still  further  from  the 
actual  duties  at  our  feet.  We  plainly  say  there  can 
be  no  true  worship  here,  —  it  is  too  poor  and  dull  a 
state  ;  —  we  only  expect  it  hereafter,  and  would  bear 
that  greater  prospect  in  our  mind.  And  so  we  fall 


HELP    THOU    MINE    UNBELIEF.  389 

into  the  insincerity,  of  coming  before  God  by  way  of 
keeping  ourselves  in  practice,  and  turning  our  religion 
into  a  Rehearsal.  What  wonder  that,  amid  these 
histrionic  affectations,  the  healthy  heart  of  faith  gets 
sicklier  till  it  dies. 

To  approach  again  to  the  theocratic  faith  of  our 
fathers,  we  must  leave  the  atmosphere  of  sacredness 
upon  the  past  and  the  future  ;  only  spread  its  margin 
either  way,  till  it  envelopes  and  glorifies  the  present. 
For  my  own  part,  I  venerate  not  less  than  others  the 
birth-hour  of  Christianity,  and  the  creative  origin  of 
worlds.  But  I  do  not  believe  that  God  lived  then 
and  there  alone  ;  or  that  if  we  could  be  transplanted 
to  those  times,  we  should  find  any  such  difference  as 
would  melt  down  the  coldness  of  our  hearts,  or  leave 
us  more  without  excuse  than  we  are  now.  There  is 
no  chronology  in  the  evidence,  any  more  than  in  the 
presence,  of  Deity.  Since  the  fathers  fell  asleep,  all 
things  continue  as  they  were  from  the  beginning,  — 
or  rather  the  wwbeginning,  —  of  creation.  The  uni- 
verse, open  to  the  eye  to-day,  looks  as  it  did  a  thou- 
sand years  ago;  and  the  morning  hymn  of  Milton 
does  but  tell  the  beauty  with  which  our  own  familiar 
sun  dressed  the  earliest  fields  and  gardens  of  the 
world.  We  see  what  all  our  fathers  saw.  And  if  we 
cannot  find  God  in  your  house  and  mine,  upon  the 
roadside,  or  the  margin  of  the  sea;  in  the  bursting 
seed  or  opening  flower;  in  the  day-duty  and  the 
night  musing ;  in  the  genial  laugh,  and  the  secret 
grief;  in  the  procession  of  life,  ever  entering  afresh, 
and  solemnly  passing  by  and  dropping  off;  I  do  not 
think  we  should  discern  him  any  more  on  the  grass 
of  Eden,  or  beneath  the  moonlight  of  Gethsemane. 
Depend  upon  it,  it  is  not  the  want  of  greater  miracles, 
83* 


390  HELP  THOU  MINE  UNBELIEF. 

but  of  the  sou]  to  perceive  such  as  are  allowed  us 
etill  that  makes  us  push  all  the  sanctities  into  the 
far  spaces  we  cannot  reach.  The  devout  feel  that 
wherever  -God's  hand  is,  there  is  miracle ;  and  it 
is  simply  an  indevoutness  which  imagines  that  only 
where  miracle  is,  can  there  be  the  real  hand  of  God. 
The  customs  of  Heaven  ought  surely  to  be  more 
sacred  in  our  eyes  than  its  anomalies ;  the  dear  old 
ways,  of  which  the  Most  High  is  never  tired,  than 
the  strange  things  which  he  does  not  love  well 
enough  ever  to  repeat.  And  he  who  will  but  discern 
beneath  the  sun,  as  he  rises  any  morning,  the  sup- 
porting finger  of  the  Almighty,  may  recover  the  sweet 
and  reverent  surprise  with  which  Adam  gazed  on  the 
first  dawn  in  Paradise.  It  is  no  outward  change,  no 
shifting  in  time  or  place  ;.but  only  the  loving  medita- 
tion of  the  pure  in  heart,  that  can  re-awaken  the 
Eternal  from  the  sleep  within  our  souls ;  that  can 
render  him  a  reality  again,  and  re-assert  for  him  once 
more  his  ancient  Name  of '  THE  LIVING  GOD.' 


XXXI. 

HAVING,   DOING,  AND   BEING. 
1  JOHN  ii.  17. 

THE  WORLD   PASSETH   AWAY  AND   THE   LUST  THEREOF  :    BUT   HE   THAT 
DOETH   THE   WILL   OF   GOD   ABIDETH   FOR   ETER. 

FEW  things  can  strike  a  thoughtful  man  with 
greater  wonder,  than  the  different  estimate  he  makes, 
in  different  moods,  of  the  same  portion  of  time. 
To-day,  he  is  engaged  with  some  speculation,  in 
which  a  millennium  is  not  worth  reckoning;  to- 
morrow, he  is  brought  to  some  experience,  in  which  a 
minute  bears  the  burden  of  an  eternal  weight.  With 
the  geologist  we  may  go  out  beyond  the  limits  of 
human  events  and  grow  familiar  with  those  vast 
periods  during  which  the  earth's  crust  was  deposited 
in  the  oceans,  or  smelted  in  the  furnaces,  or  upheaved 
from  the  gas  caverns,  of  nature ;  and  accustomed  to 
call  the  Alps  and  Andes  recent  elevations,  and  to 
treat  all  living  species  as  only  the  newest  fashion  of 
creative  skill,  we  may  well  feel  as  though  the  hasty 
sands  of  our  particular  generation  were  lost,  and  God 
could  have  no  index  small  enough  to  count  our  indi- 
vidual life.  With  the  astronomer,  we  may  take  a  sta- 
tion external  to  this  earth  itself,  recede  to  an  era  when 
possibly  the  solar  system  was  but  one  of  creation's 
morning  mists,  and  trace  its  history  as  it  first  spun 


392  HAVING,    DOING,    AND    BEING. 

itself  into  orbital  rings,  and  then  rolled  itself  up  into 
planetary  globes  ;  and  with  an  imagination  occupied 
by  cycles  so  capacious,  for  which  the  old  granite 
pillars  of  the  world  can  scarce,  with  utmost  stretch 
of  age,  afford  a  unit-measure,  it  is  not  strange  if  we 
deem  ourselves  trivial  as  the  insect,  and  transient  as 
the  flake  of  summer  snow.  Whoever  approaches  the 
human  lot  from  this  side  of  thought,  descending  upon 
it  from  the  maxima,  instead  of  ascending  from  the 
minima  of  calculable  things,  will  be  apt  to  think  it  a 
poor  affair,  and  to  regard  it  as  a  dream  really  com- 
pressed into  a  moment,  but  with  a  delusive  conscious- 
ness of  years.  Seeing  at  night  how  calm  and  silent 
are  the  stars  far  greater  than  ours,  sending  down 
the  same  cold  sharp  light  as  they  did  on  the  first 
traveller  lost  upon  the  mountains  or  sinking  in  the 
sea,  he  may  naturally  look  with  a  smile  or  a  sigh  at 
the  ferment  of  human  passion  and  pursuit,  and  gaze 
on  it  as  on  the  dust-cloud  of  a  distant  army  marching 
to  immediate  death.  '  What,'  he  might  say, '  are  the 
achievements  of  your  mightiest  force,  and  the  last 
triumphs  of  your  boasted  civilization  ?  What  do  you 
effect  by  the  vaunted  efforts  of  your  locomotive  skill? 
Only  certain  glidings,  which,  a  short  way  off,  are  but 
invisible  changes  of  place  on  the  surface  of  a  bead. 
And  what  is  the  end  of  all  your  successive  systems 
of  health  and  disease  ?  —  what  the  utmost  hope  of 
the  skill  of  all  physicians,  and  the  cries  and  prayers 
from  the  whole  infirmary  of  human  ills  ?  Only  this, 
—  that  a  little  respite  may  be  given,  till  the  rising 
pendulum  shall  have  reached  its  fall.  Nay,  what  is 
the  aim  even  of  your  nobler  institutions,  devoted  to 
the  mind  ?  On  what  do  your  ancient  schools  and 
universities,  with  generation  after  generation  of 


HAVING,   DOING,   AND    BEING.  393 

students,  spend  themselves  amid  the  murmurs  of 
polite  applause  ?  On  the  attempt  to  recover  a  few 
snatches  from  the  sayings  and  doings  of  spirits  that, 
like  yourselves,  had  to  vanish  at  cock-crowing.  And 
all  the  while  as  you  pant  and  strive  and  hope,  the 
great  immovable  God  is  with  you  close  at  hand, 
and  could  tell  you  all  by  a  whisper,  if  he  would ! ' 

It  is  quite  possible,  in  this  way,  by  bringing  the 
human  career  into  comparison  with  the  stupendous 
cycles  that  lie  around  it,  to  dwarf  its  magnitude,  and 
throw  contempt  upon  its  purposes.  The  prevailing 
tendency,  however,  is  all  in  the  opposite  direction. 
The  thoughts  which  science  presents  may  operate  as 
a  telescope  to  show  us  what  else  there  is  beside  our- 
selves, and  persuade  us  that  we  are  but  as  the  trem- 
bling leaf  in  the  boundless  forests  of  existence.  But 
those  which  are  offered  by  affection  and  natural 
experience  are  rather  apt  to  interpose  a  microscopic 
medium  ;  and  instead  of  diminishing  by  comparison 
the  whole  of  life,'  to  magnify  every  part  by  concentra- 
tion. If  that  life,  as  you  affirm,  be  but  a  short  visit 
to  this  sphere,  it  is  yet  our  only  visit ;  and  the  mo- 
ments of  our  stay  acquire  an  intenser  worth.  If  it 
has  just  begun,  and  is  also  on  the  verge  of  close, 
then  we  must  revere  it  doubly,  as  a  fresh  thing,  and 
as  a  thing  about  to  perish;  two  sanctities  comprise  it 
all,  —  a  first  day  and  a  last ;  and  there  is  no  time  for 
custom  to  dull  the  space  between  the  welcome  and 
the  adieu.  Nor,  after  all,  is  any  conscious  life  pro- 
per to  be  compared  with  the  huge  periods  of  the 
inanimate  world.  Their  giant  strides  may  roughly 
step  from  century  to  century,  and  have  less  in  them 
than  its  quivering  undulations  over  the  smallest  sur- 
face of  time.  The  two  things  are  absolutely  incom- 


394  HAVING,    DOING,    AND    BEING. 

mensurable ;  and  there  is  no  chronometer  that  can 
reckon  both.  In  moments  of  deep  sorrow,  or  high 
faith ;  when  we  either  fear  the  last  extremity,  or  hope 
for  the  dawn  of  new  deliverance ;  when  we  are  sink- 
ing to  the  point  of  lowest  depression,  struggling  on 
the  wing  of  highest  resolution;  in  startling  agonies 
of  duty  that  goad  our  jaded  strength;  in  helpless 
vigils,  when  we  must  sit  with  folded  hands  and  wait; 
in  all  crises  of  duty,  of  misery,  of  joy,  of  aspiration ; 
—  how  little  can  the  beat  of  any  clock  count  the 
elements  of  our  existence  then!  The  moments  are 
stretched  into  an  awful  fulness;  and  while  the  mid- 
night star  strikes  the  meridian  wire,  we  pass  through 
more  than  common  years.  Hence  it  is,  that  no 
familiarity  with  physical  periods  can  induce  us  to 
think  lightly  of  the  contents  of  life.  If  God,  affluent 
in  eternities,  is  lavish  of  time  upon  his  universe,  he  is 
economic  of  it  with  us;  filling  it  with  unutterable 
experiences,  and  charging  it  with  irrevocable  oppor- 
tunities. With  so  small  an  allowance  of  it  here, 
every  part  of  it  may  well  appear  a  priceless  treasure. 
And  though  too  often  we  grow  careless  of  the  por- 
tion which  we  have,  we  complain  if  there  is  any 
that  we  seem  to  lose.  We  throw  away  whole 
handsful  of  time  in  heedless  waste,  and  suffer  no 
compunction ;  but  if  God,  with  heavenly  Will,  take 
from  us  any  expected  hours,  we  burst  into  faithless 
tears.  The  term  assured  to  us,  we  think,  has  been 
cut  short;  and  the  promised  value  cruelly  withheld. 
The  truth  is,  that  neither  of  these  views, — that 
which  looks  with  philosophic  slight  on  the  whole  of 
mortal  life,  and  that  which  clings  with  human  fond- 
ness to  every  part,  especially  if  it  be  denied,  —  can 
stand  the  light  of  devout  and  Christian  thought.  On 


HAYING,    DOING,    AND    BEING.  395 

the  one  hand,  that  cannot  be  insignificant  which  God 
has  deemed  it  worth  while  to  call  out  to  eternity,  and 
set  upon  a  theatre  like  this,  fresh  with  duty  ever-new, 
and  old  with  memories  ever  sacred;  rich  as  Paradise 
with  wonder  and  beauty,  only  covered  now  through 
sorrow  with  a  conscious  heaven.  And  that  which 
God  himself  has  brought  hitherto  look  for  awhile 
through  real  living  eyes  of  thought  and  love,  trans- 
parent to  the  answering  gaze,  can  scarce,  if  we  reflect 
on  the  difference  between  its  presence  and  its  ab- 
sence, be  of  less  than  infinite  value.  Yet  on  the  other 
hand,  it  were  wrong  to  measure  its  worth  to  us  by 
the  mere  duration  of  its  stay.  It  would  be  a  far 
inferior  treasure,  were  it  calculable  thus ;  and  we  can 
say  nothing  so  depreciatory  of  a  human  life,  as  that 
we  have  lost  half  its  value,  because  it  was  not  twice 
as  long.  If  this  be  so,  the  function  it  performs  for  us 
must  be  of  the  lowest  order;  not  to  our  love,  and 
faith,  and  aspiration,  which,  once  awakened,  can  be 
doubled  by  no  addition  and  consumed  by  no  subtrac- 
tion of  moments;  but  to  our  pleasure  or  our  gains,  to 
which  alone  this  arithmetic  of  quantity  can  be  appli- 
ed. To  treat  a  life  so  incomplete,  is  to  say  that  its 
proper  end  is  unfulfilled ;  is  to  assume  that  a  certain 
amount  of  time  was  needful  to  realize  that  end;  and 
that  for  want  of  such  an  amount,  the  existence 
granted  becomes  an  aimless  fragment.  Some  lives 
do,  no  doubt,  present  so  poor  an  aspect,  that  only  by 
an  effort  of  strong  faith  can  we  refrain  from  thinking 
thus;  but  else,  it  is  of  the  mere  meanness  and  penury 
of  our  own  spirits,  that  we  lapse  into  so  unworthy  a 
complaint.  If  we  look  for  a  few  moments  into  the 
different  ends  to  which  men  live,  we  shall  soon  see, 
which  of  them  are  measurable  by  quantity,  and  pro- 
portioned to  the  time  spent  in  their  attainment. 


396  HAVING,    DOING,    AND    BEING. 

Some  men  are  eminent  for  what  they  possess; 
some,  for  what  they  achieve;  others,  for  what  they 
are.  Having,  Doing,  and  Being',  constitute  the  three 
great  distinctions  of  mankind,  and  the  three  great 
functions  of  their  life.  And  though  they  are  neces- 
sarily all  blended,  more  or  less,  in  each  individual,  it 
is  seldom  difficult  to  say,  which  of  them  is  prominent 
in  the  impression  left  upon  us  by  our  fellow  man. 

In  every  society,  and  especially  in  a  country  like 
our  own,  there  are  those  who  derive  their  chief  char- 
acteristic from  what  they  have;  who  are  always 
spoken  of  in  terms  of  revenue;  and  of  whom  you 
would  not  be  likely  to  think  much,  but  for  the  large 
account  that  stands  on  the  world's  ledger  in  their 
name.  In  themselves,  detached  from  their  favorite 
sphere,  you  would  notice  nothing  wise  or  winning. 
At  home,  possibly,  a  dry  and  withered  heart ;  among 
associates  a  selfish  and  mistrustful  talk;  in  the  coun- 
cil, a  style  of  low  ignoble  sentiments;  at  church,  a 
formal,  perhaps  an  irreverent,  dulness;  betray  a  bar- 
ren nature,  and  offer  you  only  points  of  repulsion,  so 
far  as  humanities  are  concerned ;  and  you  are  amazed 
to  think  that  you  are  looking  on  the  idols  of  the  ex- 
change. Their  greatness  comes  out  in  the  affairs  of 
bargain  and  sale,  to  which  their  faculties  seem  fairly 
apprenticed  for  life.  If  they  speak  of  the  past,  it  is 
in  memory  of  its  losses  and  its  gains;  if  of  the  future, 
it  is  to  anticipate  its  incomings  and  investments. 
The  whole  chronology  of  their  life  is  divided  accord- 
ing to  the  stages  of  their  fortunes,  and  the  progress 
of  their  dignities.  Their  children  are  interesting  to 
them  principally  as  their  heirs;  and  the  making  of 
their  will  fulfils  their  main  conception  of  being  ready 
for  their  death.  And  so  completely  do  they  paint 


HATING,    DOING,    AND    BEING.  397 

the  grand  idea  of  their  life  on  the  imagination  of  all 
who  know  them,  that  when  they  die,  the  Mammon- 
image  cannot  be  removed,  and  it  is  the  fate  of  the 
money,  not  of  the  man,  of  which  we  are  most  apt 
to  think.  Having  put  vast  prizes  in  the  funds,  but 
only  unprofitable  blanks  in  the  admiration  and  the 
hearts  of  us,  they  leave  behind  nothing  but  their 
property;  or,  as  it  is  expressively  termed,  their  '  effects? 
—  the  thing  which  they  caused,  the  main  result  of 
their  having  been  alive.  How  plain  is  it  that  we 
regard  them  merely  as  instruments  of  acquisition; 
centres  of  attraction  for  the  drifting  of  capital;  that 
they  are  important  only  as  indications  of  commodi- 
ties; and  that  their  human  personality  hangs  as  a 
mere  label  upon  a  mass  of  treasure!  Every  one  must 
have  met  with  a  few  instances  in  which  this  char- 
acter is  realized,  and  with  many  in  which,  notwith- 
standing the  relief  of  some  redeeming  and  delightful 
features,  it  is  at  least  approached.  In  proportion  as 
this  aim,  of  possession,  is  taken  to  be  paramount  in 
life,  length  of  days  must,  no  doubt,  be  deemed  indis- 
pensable to  the  human  destination.  The  longer  a 
man  lies  out  at  interest,  the  greater  must  be  the  ac- 
cumulation. If  he  is  unexpectedly  recalled,  every 
end  which  he  suggested  is  disappointed;  the  only 
thing  he  seemed  fit  for  cannot  go  on ;  he  is  a  power 
lost  from  this  sphere,  and  incapacity  thrust  upon  the 
other ;  missed  from  the  markets  here,  thrown  away 
among  sainted  spirits  there.  For  himself,  and  for 
both  worlds,  the  event  seems  deplorable  enough ;  and 
it  is  difficult  to  make  anything  but  confusion  out  of 
it.  An  imagination  tacitly  filled  with  this  conception 
of  life,  as  a  stage  prepared  for  enjoyment  and  pos- 
34 


398  HATING,    DOING,    AND    BEING. 

session,  must  look  on  a  term  that  is  unfulfilled  as  on 
a  broken  tool,  dropping  in  failure  to  the  earth. 

Of  those  who  have  thus  lived  to  accumulate  and 
enjoy,  History  is  for  the  most  part  silent;  having  in 
truth  nothing  to  say.  Not  doing  the  work,  or  joining 
in  the  worship  of  life,  but  only  feasting  at  its  table, 
they  break  up  and  drive  off  into  oblivion  as  soon  as 
the  lights  are  out  and  the  wine  is  spilt.  Belonging  en- 
tirely to  the  present,  they  never  appear  in  the  past ; 
but  sink  with  weight  of  wealth  in  the  dark  gulf;  — 
unless  perchance  some  Croesus  the  Rich  is  fortunate 
enough  to  fall  into  association  with  Solon  the  Wise. 
There  are  no  historical  materials  in  simple  animal 
existence,  nor  in  the  mere  sentient  being  of  a  man, 
considered  as  the  successful  study  of  comfort,  and 
receptacle  of  happiness.  History  is  constructed  by  a 
second  and  nobler  class,  those  who  prove  themselves 
to  be  here,  not  that  they  may  have,  but  that  they 
may  do;  to  whom  life  is  a  glorious  hour;  and  who 
are  so  seen  not  to  work  that  they  may  rest,  but  only 
to  rest  that  they  may  work.  No  sooner  do  they  look 
around  them  with  the  open  eye  of  reason  and  faith, 
upon  the  great  field  of  the  world,  than  they  perceive 
that  it  must  be  for  them  a  battle  field;  and  they 
break  up  the  tents  of  ease,  and  advance  to  the 
dangers  of  lonely  enterprise  and  the  conflict  with 
splendid  wrong.  Strong  in  the  persuasion  that  this 
is  a  God's  world,  and  that  his  Will  must  rule  it  by 
royal  right,  they  serve  in  the  severe  campaign  of 
justice;  asking  only  for  the  wages  of  life,  and  scorn- 
ing the  prizes  of  spoil  and  praise.  Wherever  you 
find  such,  whether  in  the  field,  in  the  senate,  or  in 
private  life,  you  see  the  genuine  type  of  the  heroic 
character,  —  the  clear  mind,  the  noble  heart,  indomit- 


HAYING,   DOING,   AND   BEING.  399 

able  will,  pledged  all  to  some  arduous  and  unselfish 
task;  and  whether  it  be  the  achievement,  with  Cob- 
den,  of  freedom  of  pacific  commerce  between  land 
and  land ;  orl  with  Clarkson,  of  freedom  of  person  be- 
tween man  and  man ;  or,  with  Cromwell,  of  freedom 
of  worship  between  earth  and  heaven;  the  essential 
feature  is  in  all  instances  the  same;  the  man  holds 
himself  as  the  mere  instrument  of  some  social  work ; 
commits  himself  in  full  allegiance  to  it ;  and  spends 
himself  wholly  in  it.  They  'have  a  baptism  to  be 
baptized  with  ;  and  how  are  they  straitened,  till  it  be 
accomplished ! '  During  the  glorious  conflict  of  such 
lives  it  is  impossible  not  to  look  on  with  breathless  in- 
terest. Once  possessed  of  their  great  design,  we  watch 
its  development  with  eager  eye  and  beating  heart. 
And  if,  early  in  the  day,  they  are  struck  down,  we 
clasp  our  hands  in  sudden  anguish,  and  a  cry  goes 
up  that  the  field  is  lost.  And  though  this  despair  is 
a  momentary  loss  of  the  true  faith;  though  God 
never  fails  to  rally  the  forces  of  every  good  cause 
that  has  mustered  for  battle  on  this  earth ;  yet,  no 
doubt,  the  victory  in  such  a  case  is  deferred;  the 
plan  is  broken  off;  the  painful  sense  of  a  suspended 
work,  that  might  have  been  finished,  remains  upon 
survivor's  hearts.  On  behalf  of  the  noble  actors 
themselves,  indeed,  we  have  no  embarrassment  of 
faith  ;  there  is  that  within  them  which  may  well  find 
a  home  in  more  worlds  than  one,  and  meet  a  wel- 
come wherever  Almighty  justice  reigns.  We  are  not 
ashamed,  as  with  the  man  of  mere  possession,  to 
follow  them  into  the  higher  transitions  of  their  being, 
and  knock  for  them  at  the  gate  of  better  spheres. 
But  there  appears  something  untimely  and  deplor- 
able in  the  providence  of  the  world  they  quit.  The 


400  HAVING,    DOING,    AND    BEING. 

fruit  has  not  been  permitted  to  ripen  ere  it  dropped. 
The  great  function  of  their  life  required  time  for  its 
fulfilment;  and  time  has  been  denied.  Their  benefi- 
cent action  was  wholly  through  the  energies  of  their 
living  will ;  and  these  energies  are  laid  for  us  in  un- 
seasonable sleep.  And  thus,  while  we  are  ashamed 
at  the  grave  of  the  Epicurean,  we  weep  over  the  de- 
parture of  the  hero. 

But  there  is  a  life  higher  than  either  of  these.  The 
saintly  is  beyond  the  heroic  mind.  To  get  good,  is 
animal;  to  do  good  is  human ;  to  be  good  is  divine. 
The  true  use  of  a  man's  possessions  is  to  help  his 
work ;  and  the  best  end  of  all  his  work,  is  to  show  us 
what  he  is.  The  noblest  workers  of  our  world  be- 
queath us  nothing  so  great  as  the  image  of  them- 
selves. Their  task,  be  it  ever  so  glorious,  is  historical 
and  transient ;  the  majesty  of  their  spirit  is  essential 
and  eternal.  "When  the  external  conditions  which 
supplied  the  matter  of  their  work  have  wholly  de- 
cayed from  the  surface  of  the  earth,  and  become  ab- 
sorbed in  its  substance,  the  perennial  root  of  their  life 
remains,  bearing  a  blossom  ever  fair,  and  a  foliage 
ever  green.  And  while  to  some,  God  gives  it  to  show 
themselves  through  their  work,  to  others  he  assigns  it 
to  show  themselves  without  even  the  opportunity  of 
work.  He  sends  them  transparent  into  this  world ; 
and  leaves  us  nothing  to  gather  and  infer.  Good- 
ness, beauty,  truth,  acquired  by  others,  are  original  to 
them ;  hiding  behind  the  eye,  thinking  on  the  brow, 
and  making  music  in  the  voice.  The  angels  ap- 
pointed to  guard  the  issues  of  the  pure  life  seem 
rather  to  have  taken  their  station  at  its  fountains, 
and  to  pour  into  it  a  sanctity  at  first.  Such  beings 
live  simply  to  express  themselves ;  to  stand  between 


HAVING,   DOING,   AND   BEING.  401 

heaven  and  earth,  and  meditate  for  our  dull  hearts. 
"With  fewer  outward  objects  than  others,  or  at  least 
with  a  less  limited  practical  mission  devoting  them  to 
a  fixed  task,  their  life  is  a  soliloquy  of  love  and  as- 
piration ;  the  soul  not  being  with  them,  the  servant 
of  action,  but  action  rather  the  needful  articulation  of 
the  soul.  Not,  of  course,  that  they  are,  in  the  slight- 
est degree,  exempt  from  the  stern  and  positive  obliga- 
tions of  duty,  or  licensed,  any  more  than  others,  to 
dream  existence  away.  If  once  they  fall  into  this 
snare,  and  cease  to  work,  the  lineaments  of  beauty 
and  goodness  are  exchanged  for  those  of  shame  and 
grief.  Usually  they  do  not  less,  but  rather  more,  than 
others;  only  under  somewhat  sorrowful  conditions, 
having  spirits  prepared  for  what  is  more  than  human, 
and  being  obliged  to  move  within  limits  that  are  only 
human.  The  worth  of  such  a  life  depends  little 
on  its  quantity  ;  it  is  an  affair  of  quality  alone.  These 
highest  ends  of  existence  have  but  slight  relation  to 
time.  Years  cannot  mellow  the  love  already  ripe,  or 
purify  the  perceptions  already  clear,  or  lift  the  as- 
piration that  already  enters  heaven.  It  is  with  Christ- 
like  minds,  as  it  was  with  Christ  himself.  His  divine 
work  was  not  in  the  task  that  he  did,  but  in  the 
image  which  he  left.  You  cannot  say  that  there 
was  any  great  business  of  existence,  estimable  by 
time,  which  he  set  himself  to  achieve ;  and  which 
you  can  even  imagine  to  be  broken  off  by  his  de- 
parture. He  lived  enough  to  manifest  the  heavenly 
spirit  and  solemn  dignity  of  life.  At  thirty  years  he 
passed  away ;  and  no  one,  I  suppose,  was  ever  heard 
to  lament  that  he  did  not  stay  till  sixty.  He  thought 
indeed  as  the  faithful  must  ever  think,  that  there  was 
a  '  work  given  him  to  do  ; '  unaware  that,  by  his  very 
34* 


402  HAVING,    DOING,    AND    BEING. 

manner  of  devotion  to  it,  it  was  already  done.  So 
eager  was  he  worthily  to  finish  it,  that,  of  all  his  sor- 
rows, to  be  cut  short  in  it  was  the  bitterest  cup  that 
might  not  pass  from  him  except  he  drank  of  it ;  un- 
conscious that  the  spirit  and  the  conquest  of  that 
agony  did  actually  bring  it  to  the  sublimest  close. 
His  life  stood  in  different  relations  to  himself  and  to 
the  world.  To  himself  it  was  a  solemn  trust ;  to 
the  world,  the  truth  and  grace  of  God ;  to  him,  it 
was  given  as  the  subject  of  achievement ;  to  the 
world,  as  the  object  of  new  faith  and  love.  And  so 
the  early  cross,  so  dark  to  him,  becomes  the  holiest 
vision  of  our  hearts.  It  broke  nothing  abruptly  off 
for  us ;  and  enabled  him  to  leave  a  Presence  upon 
the  earth,  sufficient  to  soothe  the  sorrows,  inspire  the 
conscience,  and  deepen  the  earnestness,  of  succeed- 
ing ages.  And  so  is  it  with  the  least  of  his  disciples, 
whose  mind  is  truly  tinged  with  the  hues  of  the  same 
heavenly  spirit.  The  very  child,  of  too  transient  stay, 
may  paint  on  the  darkness  of  our  sorrow,  so  fair  a 
vision  of  loving  wonder,  of  reverent  trust,  of  deep  and 
thoughtful  patience,  that  a  divine  presence  abides 
with  us  forever,  as  the  mild  and  constant  light  of 
faith  and  hope.  What  we  had  deemed  a  glory  of  the 
earth,  may  prove  but  the  image  of  a  star  upon  a 
stream  of  life,  effaceable  by  the  first  night-wind  that 
sweeps  over  the  waters.  But  that  we  have  seen  it, 
and  looked  into  the  pure  depths  given  for  its  light, 
is  enough  to  assure  us  that,  though  visionary  below,  it 
is  a  reality  above,  and  has  a  place  among  the  im- 
perishable lustres  of  God's  universe.  Thus,  with  at- 
tributes of  being  that  have  little  concern  with  time, 
the  reckoning  of  moments  is  of  less  account.  The 
transitory  reflection  points  to  an  eternal  beauty.  And 


HAVING,    DOING,    AND    BEING.  403 

while  human  things  are  learned  by  the  lessons  of  a 
slow  experience,  a  momentary  flash  of  blessing  may 
give  us  what  is  most  divine;  and  like  the  lightning 
that  strikes  us  blind,  leave  a  glory  on  the  soul,  when 
our  very  sight  is  gone. 


XXXII. 

THE  FREE-MAN   OF  CHRIST. 

1  CORINTHIANS  vn.  22. 

HE  THAT  IS  CALLED  IN  THE  LORD,  BEING  A  SERVANT,  IS  THE  LORD'S 
FREE-MAN  ;  LIKEWISE  ALSO,  HE  THAT  IS  CALLED,  BEING  FREE,  IS 
CHRIST'S  SERVANT. 

FREEDOM,  in  the  most  comprehensive  sense  of  the 
word,  can  evidently  belong  to  Omnipotence  alone. 
To  be  exempt  from  all  controlling  force  without,  is 
the  exclusive  prerogative  of  a  Being,  within  whose 
nature  are  folded  all  the  active  powers  of  the  universe, 
and  to  whom  there  is  no  external  Cause,  but  the  acts 
projected  from  his  own  will  To  be  at  rest  from  all 
conflict  within,  can  be  the  lot. of  no  mind,  susceptible 
of  progressive  attainment  in  excellence ;  for  moral 
growth  is  but  a  prolonged  controversy  in  which  con- 
science achieves  victory  after  victory;  and  He  only 
whose  holiness  is  eternal,  original,  incapable  of  in- 
crease or  decline,  can  have  a  mind  absolutely  serene 
and  unclouded;  of  power  immense,  but  rapid  and 
unreluctant  as  the  lightning ;  of  designs,  however 
majestic,  bursting  without  appreciable  transition  from 
the  conception  to  the  reality.  Descend  to  created  na- 
tures ;  and  whatever  force  they*  comprise  is  a  force 
imprisoned  and  controlled  ;  if  by  nothing  else,  at  least 
by  the  laws  of  that  body,  which  gives  them  a  locality, 
and  affords  them  the  only  tools  wherewith  to  work 


THE    FREE-MAN    OP   CHRIST.  405 

their  will.  The  life  of  beings  that  are  born  and  ripen 
and  die,  or  pass  through  any  stages  of  transition,  floats 
upon  a  current  silent  but  irresistible.  In  other  spheres 
there  may  possibly  exist  rational  beings  unconscious 
of  the  restraining  force  of  God  exercised  upon  them  ; 
whose  desires  do  not  beat  against  their  destiny ; 
whose  powers  of  conceiving  and  of  executing, 
whether  absolutely  small  or  great,  are  adjusted  to 
perfect  correspondence.  And  since  we  measure  all 
things  by  our  own  ideas,  he  whose  conception  never 
overlaps  his  execution,  can  never  detect  the  poorness 
of  his  achievements,  how  trivial  soever  they  may  be 
in  the  eye  of  a  spectator.  But  man,  at  all  events, 
palpably  feels  his  limits  ;  receives  a  thousand  checks, 
that  remind  him  of  the  foreign  agencies  to  which  he 
is  subject ;  glides  like  a  steersman  in  the  night  over 
waters  neither  boundless  nor  noiseless,  but  broken  by 
the  roar  of  the  rapid,  and  dizzy  with  the  dim  shapes 
of  rocky  perils.  Our  whole  existence,  all  its  energy 
of  virtue  and  of  passion,  is,  in  truth,  but  the  struggle 
of  freewill  against  the  chains  that  bind  us  ; —  happy 
he,  that  by  implicit  submission  to  the  law  of  duty  es- 
capes the  severity  of  every  other  !  Our  nature  is  but  a 
casket  of  impatient  necessities  ;  urgencies  of  instinct, 
of  affection,  of  reason,  of  faith ;  the  pressure  of  which 
against  the  inertia  of  the  present  determines  the  living 
movements,  and  sustains  the  permanent  unrest  of 
life.  To  take  the  prescribed  steps  is  difficult ;  to  de- 
cline them  and  stand  still  is  impossible.  We  can 
no  more  preserve  a  stationary  attitude  in  the  moral 
world,  than  we  can  refuse  to  accompany  the  physical 
earth  in  its  rotation.  The  will  may  be  reluctant 
to  stir ;  but  it  is  speedily  overtaken  by  provocatives 
that  scorn  the  terms  of  ease,  and  take  no  heed  of  its 


406  THE    FREE-MAN    OF    CHRIST. 

expostulations.  Driven  by  the  recurring  claims  of  the 
bodily  nature,  or  drawn  by  the  permanent  objects  of 
the  spiritual,  all  men  are  impelled  to  effort  by  the 
energy  of  some  want,  that  cannot  have  spontaneous 
satisfaction.  The  laborer  that  earns  his  bread  by  the 
sweat  of  his  brow,  is  chased  by  the  hindmost  of  all 
necessities,  —  animal  hunger.  The  prophet  and  the 
saint,  moved  by  the  supreme  of  human  aspirations, 
—  the  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness,  —  em- 
brace a  life  of  no  less  privation  and  of  severer  con- 
flict. And  between  these  extremes  are  other  ends  of 
various  kinds,  —  renown  for  the  ambitious,  art  for  the 
perceptive,  knowledge  for  the  sage,  —  given  to  us  to 
graduate  in  fair  proportion.  All  these  are  conscious 
powers,  but  all  imply  a  conscious  resistance.  Each 
separately  precipitates  the  will  upon  a  thousand 
obstacles ;  and  all  together  demand  the  ceaseless 
vigilance  of  conscience  to  preserve  their  order,  and 
prevent  the  encroachments  of  usurpation.  Thus,  all 
action  implies  the  presence  of  some  necessity.  And 
if  other  and  more  liberal  conditons  are  requisite  to 
perfect  freedom,  then  can  no  man  ever  be  free. 

Exemption  then  from  the  sense  of  want  and  the 
need  of  work,  is  not  that  which  constitutes  freedom 
to.  the  human  being.  Another  form  of  expression  is 
sometimes  resorted  to,  in  order  to  discriminate  the 
free  from  the  servile  mind,  and  contrast  the  nobleness 
of  the  one  with  the  abjectness  of  the  other.  It  is 
said  that  the  freemen  acts  from  within,  on  the  sug- 
gestion of  ideas ;  while  the  slave  is  the  creature  of 
outward  coercion,  and  obeys  some  kind  of  physical 
force.  But  this  language  still  conceals  from  us  the 
real  distinction.  Even  the  man  whose  person,  as 
well  as  mind,  is  in  a  condition  of  slavery,  is  not 


THE    FBEE-MAN    OF    CHRIST.  .          407 

necessarily,  or  usually,  under  any  external  and  ma- 
terial constraint.  Hour  by  hour,  and  day  by  day,  he 
enjoys  immunity  from  bodily  compulsion;  and  ha- 
bitually lives  at  one  remove  from  the  application  of 
direct  sensation  to  his  will.  He  too,  like  other  men, 
is  worked  by  an  ideal  influence,  —  a  fear  that  haunts, 
an  image  that  disturbs  him.  When  the  field-serf 
plies  his  spade  with  new  energy  at  the  approaching 
voice  of  the  Steward,  it  is  not  that  any  muscular 
grasp  seizes  on  his  limbs  and  enforces  a  quicker 
movement;  but  that  a  mental  terror  is  awakened, 
and  the  phantom  of  the  lash  flies  through  his  startled 
fancy.  And,  in  higher  cases  of  obedience,  it  is  pro- 
portionally more  evident,  that  the  physical  objects 
which  are  the  implements  of  procuring  submission 
fulfil  their  end  by  the  mere  power  of  suggestion. 
The  eagle  of  the  Roman  legion,  the  cross  in  the 
battles  of  the  crusades,  reared  its  head  above  the 
hosts  upon  the  field;  and  wherever  this  instrument, 
made  by  the  chisel  and  the  saw,  was  moved  about 
hither  and  thither,  it  drew  to  it  the  wave  of  fight  and 
swayed  the  living  mass,  content  to  be  mowed  down 
themselves,  if  it  alone  were  saved.  It  was  an  em- 
blem of  things  most  powerful  with  their  hearts;  and 
illustrates  by  another  example,  the  truth,  that  the 
force  which  persuades  the  submissive  will  is,  in  all 
instances,  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest,  internal 
and  ideal.  The  difference  between  the  free  and 
servile  must  be  sought,  not  in  the  distinction  between 
a  physical  and  a  mental  impulse,  but  in  the  different 
order  of  ideas  in  which  the  action  of  the  two  has  its 
source. 

There  are  two  governing  ideas  that,  without  mate- 
rial error,  may  be  said  to  rule  the  actions  of  mankind, 


408  THE    FREE-MAX    OF    CHRIST. 

and  share  between  them  the  dominion  of  all  human 
souls;  the  idea  of  pleasure  and  pain;  and  the  idea  of 
the  noble  and  ignoble.  Every  one,  in  every  deed, 
follows  either  what  he  enjoys  or  what  he  reveres. 
Now  he,  and  he  only,  is  free,  who  implicitly  submits 
to  that  which  he  deeply  venerates;  who  takes  part, 
offensive  and  defensive,  with  the  just  and  holy 
against  the  encroachments  of  evil;  who  feels  his 
self-denials  to  be  his  privilege,  not  his  loss;  a  vic- 
tory that  he  has  won,  not  a  spoil  that  he  has  been 
obliged  to  forego.  Such  a  one  is  free,  because  he  is 
ruled  by  no  power  which  he  feels  to  be  unrightful 
and  usurping,  but  maintains  in  ascendancy  the  divine 
Spirit  that  has  an  eternal  title  to  the  monarchy  of 
all  souls;  because  he  is  never  driven  to  do  that  which 
he  knows  to  be  beneath  him;  because  he  is  conscious 
no  longer  of  severe  internal  conflict,  or  it  issues  in 
secure  enfranchisement;  because  self-contempt,  and 
fear  and  restlessness,  and  all  the  feelings  peculiar  to  a 
state  of  thraldom,  are  entirely  unknown.  And  they 
all  are  slaves, — liable  to  the  peculiar  sins  and  mise- 
ries of  the  servile  state, — to  its  meanness,  its  cowar- 
dice, its  treachery; — who  either  have  nothing  which 
they  revere,  or,  having  it,  insults  its  authority,  and 
trample  it  under  the  Bacchanalian  feet  of  pleasure. 
It  is  the  worst  and  last  curse  of  actual  personal 
slavery,  that  it  extinguishes  the  notion  of  rights,  and 
with  it  the  sense  of  duties;  that  it  quenches  the 
desire  and  conscious  capacity  for  better  things;  that 
degradation  becomes  impossible;  that  blows  may  be 
inflicted,  and  the  pain  go  no  further  than  the  flesh; 
and  that  by  feeding  the  eyes  with  the  prospect  of 
pleasure,  or  brandishing  the  threat  of  infliction,  you 
may  move  the  creature  as  you  will.  And  whenever, 


THE    FREE-MAN    OF    CHKIST.  409 

by  men  at  large,  nothing  is  esteemed  holy  and  excel- 
lent, and  enjoyment  or  suffering  are  the  only  measures 
of  good,  the  essence  of  the  same  debasement  exists. 
The  slave  flies  the  idea  of  pain;  the  voluptuary  pur- 
sues the  idea  of  pleasure ;  a  menace  or  a  bribe  is  the 
force  that  makes  a  tool  of  both;  and  they  must  be 
referred  to  the  same  class.  Nor  does  the  analogy 
between  them  fail  in  cases  of  mixed  character,  and 
imperfect  degradation.  If  the  serf  has  not  sunk  to 
the  level  which  it  is  the  tendency  of  his  condition  to 
reach,  if  he  has  still  his  dreams  of  justice,  his  half- 
formed  sense  of  human  dignity,  it  is  then  his  privi- 
lege to  be  wretched;  to  feel  an  agonizing  variance 
between  his  nature  and  his  lot,  and  writhe  as  the 
iron  entereth  his  soul.  And  a  like  miserable  shame 
does  every  one  suffer,  who  offers  indignity  to  his  own 
higher  capacities;  who  suppresses  in  silence  and  in- 
action the  impulses  of  his  devout  affections,  and  is 
seduced  or  terrified  into  conscious  vileness.  It  is  not 
without  sufficient  reason  that  all  those  whose  wills 
are  of  self-indulgence  make,  are  charged  with  being 
enthralled.  Their  minds  have  the  very  stamp  of 
slavery. 

The  essential  root  then  of  all  dependence  and  ser- 
vility of  soul  lies  in  this,  that  the  mind  loves  pleasure 
more  than  God.  The  essence  of  true  spiritual  liberty 
is  in  this;  that  the  mind  has  high  objects  which  it 
loves  better  than  its  own  indulgence;  in  the  service 
of  which  hardship  and  death  are  honorable  and  wel- 
come; which  must  be  subordinated  to  nothing;  which 
men  are  not  simply  to  pursue  in  order  to  live ;  but 
which  they  live  in  order  to  pursue.  In  acknowledg- 
ing the  pleasurable  as  supreme,  consists  the  real 
degradation  and  disloyalty  of  the  one.;  in  vowing 
35 


410  THE  FREE-MA:*  OF  CHRIST. 

undivided   allegiance    to  what  is  worthy,  true,  and 
right,  consists  the  power  and  freedom  of  the  other. 

Let  the  Christian  beware,  as  he  loves  the  birth- 
right of  a  child  of  God,  how  he  takes  up  any  other 
and  more  superficial  idea  of  moral  liberty  than  this. 
Especially  let  him  not  yield  to  the  prevalent  and 
growing  feeling  of  these  days,  that  there  is  some- 
thing disgraceful  in  obedience  altogether;  —  that  it  is 
an  unmanly  attitude  of  mind;  and  that  if  occasions 
do  occur  in  human  life,  when  self-will  must  succumb, 
it  is  best  to  slur  over  so  annoying  a  crisis,  and  at  all 
events  avoid  the  appearance  of  capitulation.  The 
heart  that  secretly  feels  thus  has  never  felt  the  con- 
tact of  Christ's  divine  wisdom;  the  slightest  touch  of 
but  the  hem  of  his  garment  in  the  press  and  crowd 
of  life,  would  have  cured  the  burning  of  this  inward 
fever.  For,  is  not  this  insubordinate  will  fighting 
with  its  lot,  instead  of  loving  it, —  trying  bolts  and 
bars  against  it,  and  standing  hostile  siege  instead  of 
throwing  open  its  gates,  and  with  reverent  hospital- 
ity entertaining  it  as  an  angel  visitant?  Great  and 
sacred  is  obedience,  my  friends ;  he  who  is  not  able, 
in  the  highest  majesty  of  manhood,  to  obey,  with 
clear  and  open  brow  a  Law  higher  than  himself,  is 
barren  of  all  faith  and  love;  and  tightens  his  chains, 
moreover,  in  struggling  to  be  free.  A  child-like  trust 
of  heart,  that  can  take  a  hand  and  wondering  walk 
in  paths  unknown  and  strange,  is  the  prime  requisite 
of  all  religion.  Let  the  Great  Shepherd  lead;  and  by 
winding  ways,  not  without  green  pastures  and  still 
waters  we  shall  climb  insensibly,  and  reach  the  tops 
of  the  everlasting  hills,  where  the  winds  are  cool  and 
the  sight  is  glorious.  But,  in  the  noon  of  life,  to 
leap  and  struggle  against  the  adamantine  precipice 


THE    FREE-MAN    OF    CHKIST.  411 

will  only  bruise  our  strength,  and  cover  us  with  sul- 
try dust.  Among  the  thousand  indications  how  far 
men  have  wandered  from  this  temper,  and  poisoned 
their  minds  with  the  sophistries  of  self-will,  this  is 
enough ;  that  there  are  some  who,  instead  of  self- 
abandonment  to  God,  appear  to  think  that  they  can 
put  him  and  his  truth  under  obligation  to  themselves, 
and  that  they  confer  a  great  favor  in  encouraging  the 
public  regard  to  his  will  and  worship ;  who,  having 
made  up  then*  minds  that  Christianity  is  useful  in 
many  ways,  and  of  excellent  service  in  managing  the 
weaker  portion  of  mankind,  resolve  to  patronize  it. 
Well ;  —  it  is  an  ancient  arrogance,  lasting  as  the 
vanities  of  the  human  heart.  The  Pharisee,  it  would 
appear,  belongs  to  a  sect  never  extinct;  he  lives  im- 
mortal upon  the  earth  ;  and  in  our  day,  like  Simon  of 
old,  graciously  condescends  to  ask  the  Lord  Jesus  to 
dine! 

Nor  is  there  any  truth  in  the  notion  that  it  must 
be  disgraceful  to  serve  and  obey  the  will  of  our  fel- 
low-men; of  our  equals;  of  those  even  who  are 
weaker  and  not  wiser  than  ourselves.  It  depends 
altogether  on  the  feeling  that  prompts  the  submis- 
sion, whether  it  be  self-interest  or  reverence.  To  be 
controlled  by  them  against  our  idea  of  the  pleasant, 
is  by  no  means  necessarily  debasing ;  to  be  controlled 
by  them  against  our  idea  of  the  right,  is.  The  gross 
conception  of  liberty,  which  takes  it  to  consist  in 
doing  whatever  we  like,  tends  only  to  a  restless  per- 
sonal indulgence,  —  to  a  burning,  insatiable  thirst  for 
selfish  happiness,  the  importunity  of  which  renders 
this  fancied  freedom  bitter  as  the  vilest  slavery. 
Does  any  one  doubt,  whether  subjection  the  most 
absolute  can  ever  be  noble?  Go  into  a  home  where 


412  THE    FKEE-MAN    OF    CHEIST. 

a  child  lies  sick, — one  of  a  joyous  family  where  often 
merry  voices  ring  from  morn  to  night.     Silence,  the 
unconscious   forerunner   of  death,  flits  through  the 
house,  touching  with  her  seal  the  lips  even    of  the 
gayest  prattler;   and  when  the  faint  cry  of  feverish 
waking  frets  forth   from   the   pillow,  how   fleet   the 
answer  to  the  call!   how  soft  the  mother's  cheerful 
words   from  out  the  anguished  heart!  how  prompt 
the  father's  hand  with  the  cup  of  cold  water  to  cool 
the  parched  tongue.     Every  wayward  wish,  perhaps 
discarded  soon  as  formed,  swift  messengers  glide  to 
and  fro  to  gratify;   every  burst   of  impatience  falls 
softly  and  without  recoil  on  playmates  never  wound- 
ed so  before.     No  despot  was  ever  so  obeyed,  as  this 
little  child,  whose  will  is  for  awhile  the  sole  domestic 
law;  for  despots  acquire  no  such  title  to  command. 
But  this  title  recorded  in  God's  handwriting  of  love 
on  the  tablets  of  our  humanity,  we  must  recognize 
and  obey.     The  terms  of  it  proclaim,  in  defiance  of 
the  pretensions  of  self-will,  that  the  service  of  others 
is  our  divinest  freedom;  and  that  the  law  which  rules 
us  becomes  the  charter  that  disenthrals  us.     Nay,  to 
work  patiently  in  faith  and  love,  to  do  not  what  we 
like,  but  what  we  revere,  confers  not  liberty  only  but 
power.     He  at  least  who,  of  all  our  race,  was  the 
most  indubitably  free,  and  the  great  emancipator  too, 
had  in   him  this  attribute,  that '  he  pleased  not  him- 
self,' and  esteemed  it  his  mission  '  not  to  be  minis- 
tered unto,  but  to  minister.'     And  therefore  did  he 
obtain  a  name    above    every    name,    and    put    the 
world  beneath  his  feet.      Having  claimed    nothing, 
not  even  himself,  it  is  given  him  to  inherit  all  things. 
His  power  indeed   over  men  was  slow  in  gathering, 
and  they  that  loved  him  in  his  mortal  life,  and  lived 


THE    FREE-MAN    OP    CHKIST.  413 

and  suffered  for  his  sake,  were  few.  Had  he  needed 
then  a  rescue  and  a  retinue,  he  must  have  looked  to 
the  '  legions  of  Angels,'  who  alone  were  qualified  for 
a  reverence  and  fidelity  so  true.  But  now  let  him 
come;  and  would  not  the  legions  of  our  world  throng 
forth  to  meet  him ;  casting  the  will  of  pride  beneath 
his  feet,  strewing  his  path  with  flowers  of  joy  which 
he  has  caused  to  bloom,  and  flinging  their  glad 
Hosannas  to  the  sky  ? 

By  the  meekest  ministrations  did  the  Lord  acquire 
his  blessed  sway.  How  different  is  the  method 
usually  resorted  to  in  order  to  obtain  the  services  of 
others!  Instead  of  thinking,  speaking,  acting  freely, 
and  in  the  divine  spirit  of  duty,  and  leaving  it  to 
God  to  append  what  influence  and  authority  he  may 
see  fit,  men  begin  by  coveting  the  services  of  others, 
and  resolving  to  have  them ;  and,  being  sure  that 
they  can  at  least  be  purchased  by  money,  they  '  make 
haste  to  get  rich ; '  often  hurrying  over  every  species 
of  mean  compliance  for  this  purpose,  in  the  wretched 
hope  of  earning  their  enfranchisement  in  the  end. 
This  process  of  making  their  moral  liberty  contingent 
upon  the  purse,  is  characteristically  termed,  '•gaining 
an  independence?  The  very  phrase  is  a  satire  upon 
the  morals  of  the  class  that  invented  it,  and  the  na- 
tion that  adopts  it.  We  then  are  a  people,  who  ex- 
press by  the  same  word,  the  freedom  of  the  mind,  the 
high  rule  of  conscience  and  conviction,  and  a  thing  of 
gold,  that  can  be  kept  at  a  bank,  or  invested  in  the 
funds.  With  us,  broad  acres  must  go  before  bold 
deeds;  one  must  possess  an  estate  before  he  can  be  a 
man.  And  so,  to  '  win  an  independence,'  many  an 
aspirant  becomes  a  sycophant;  to  'win  an  indepen- 
dence,' he  licks  the  feet  of  every  disgrace  that  can  add 
85* 


414  THE    FREE-MAN    OP    CHRIST. 

a  shiling  to  his  fortune;  to  'win  an  independence,' 
he  courts  the  men  whom  he  despises,  and  stoops  to 
the  pretences  that  he  hates;  to  'win  an  indepen- 
dence,' he  solemnly  professes  that  which  he  secretly 
derides,  and  grows  glib  in  uttering  falsehoods  that 
should  scald  his  lips.  Truly  this  modern  idol  is  a 
God,  who  compels  his  votaries  to  crawl  up  the  steps 
of  his  throne.  And  when  the  homage  has  been  paid, 
and  the  prize  is  gained,  how  noble  a  creature  must 
the  worshipper  issue  forth,  who,  by  such  discipline, 
has  achieved  his  'independence'  at  last! 

This  miserable  Heathenism  is  simply  reversed  in 
the  Christian  method  and  estimate  of  liberty.  The 
road  to  genuine  spiritual  freedom,  taking,  it  may 
seem,  a  strange  direction,  lies  through  what  the  older 
moralists  called  '  Self-annihilation.'  Renounce  we 
our  wishes,  and  the  oppositions  that  bear  against  us 
inevitably  vanish.  As  force  is  made  evident  only  by 
resistance,  necessity  is  perceptible  only  by  the  pres- 
sure it  offers  to  our  claims  and  desires.  He  who 
resists  not  at  all,  feels  no  hostile  power;  is  chafed  by 
no  irritation;  mortified  by  no  disappointment.  He 
bends  to  the  storm  as  it  sweeps  by,  and  lifts  a  head 
serene  when  it  is  gone.  Nor  is  his  liberty  merely 
negative;  self-will  is  displaced  only  to  make  way  for 
God's  will;  and  weakness  is  surrendered  that  Al- 
mightiness  may  be  enthroned.  The  positive  empire 
of  the  right  takes  the  place  of  a  feeble  and  contested 
sway.  The  efficacy  of  the  change  is  sure  to  be  seen 
in  achievement  no  less  than  in  endurance.  Over 
him  that  shall  undergo  it  the  world  and  men  lose  all 
their  deterring  power.  Do  what  they  may  with  their 
instruments  of  persecution  and  derision,  none  of  these 
things  move  him.  They  cannot  sting  him  into  scorn. 


THE    FREE-MAN    OF    CHRIST.  415 

His  ends  lie  far  beyond  their  reach.  Who  can  hinder 
him  from  following  that  which  he  reveres ;  from  em- 
bracing in  his  love  the  world  that  crushes  him;  and 
remaining  true  to  the  God  that  tries  him  as  by  fire? 
It  is  the  Son  that  has  made  him  free,  and  he  is  free 
indeed ! 


XXXIII. 

THE  GOOD  SOLDIER    OF  JESUS    CHRIST. 

2  TIMOTHY  11.  3. 
THOU  THEREFORE  ENDURE  HARDNESS,  AS  A  GOOD  SOLDIER  OF  JESUS 

CHRIST. 

THERE  would  seem  to  be  an  incurable  variance 
between  the  life  which  men  covet  for  themselves  and 
that  which  they  admire  in  others ;  nay,  between  the 
lot  which  they  would  choose  beforehand,  and  that  in 
which  they  glory  afterwards.  In  prospect,  nothing 
appears  so  attractive  as  ease  and  licensed  comfort; 
in  retrospect,  nothing  so  delightful  as  toil  and  strenu- 
ous service.  Half  the  actions  of  mankind  are  for  the 
diminution  of  labor;  yet  labor  is  the  thing  they  most 
universally  respect.  We  should  think  it  the  greatest 
gain  to  get  rid  of  effort;  yet  if  we  could  cancel  from 
the  past  those  memorable  men  in  whom  it  reached 
its  utmost  intensity,  and  whose  whole  existence  was 
a  struggle,  we  should  leave  human  nature  without  a 
lustre,  and  empty  history  of  its  glory.  The  aim 
which  God  assigns  to  us  as  our  highest,  is  indeed  the 
direct  reverse  of  that  which  we  propose  to  ourselves. 
He  would  have  us  in  perpetual  conflict; — we  crave 
an  unbroken  peace.  He  keeps  us  ever  on  the  march ; 
—  we  pace  the  green  sod  by  the  way  with  many  a 
sigh  for  rest.  He  throws  us  on  a  rugged  universe' — 


THE    GOOD    SOLDIER    OF    JESUS    CHEIST.  417 

and  our  first  care  is  to  make  it  smooth.  His  resolve 
is  to  demand  from  us,  without  ceasing,  a  living 
power,  a  force  fresh  from  the  spirit  he  has  given; 
ours,  to  get  into  such  settled  ways,  that  life  may 
almost  go  of  itself,  with  scarce  the  trouble  of  winding 
up.  So  that  TIME,  administered  by  Him,  is  always 
breaking  up  the  old ;  by  us  is  ri vetting  and  confirm- 
ing it.  With  him,  it  is  the  source  of  new  growths 
and  fresh  combinations;  which  we  proceed,  as  long 
as  we  can,  to  cut  down  and  accommodate  to  the 
order  which  they  interrupt.  He  employs  it  in  rolling 
the  forest  into  the  river,  and  turning  the  stream  from 
our  abodes;  in  burying  our  fields  and  villages  be- 
neath the  shifting  sand-hills,  which  we  strive  to  bind 
with  grassy  roots;  in  bringing  back  the  marsh  on  our 
neglected  lands,  and  setting  us  again  the  problem 
of  pestilence  and  want.  Every  way  he  urges  our 
reluctant  will.  He  grows  the  thistle  and  the  sedge ; 
but  expects  us  to  raise  the  olive  and  the  corn ;  hav- 
ing given  us  a  portion  of  strength  and  skill  for  such 
an  end.  He  directs  over  the  earth  the  shifting  wave 
of  human  population,  and  brings  about  those  new 
conditions  from  which  spring  the  rivalries  and  heats 
of  nations ;  and  expects  us  to  evolve  peace  and 
justice;  having  inspired  us  with  reason  and  affection 
for  this  end.  He  leaves  in  each  man's  lot  a  thicket 
of  sharp  temptations;  and  expects  him,  though  with 
bleeding  feet,  to  pass  firmly  through;  having  given 
him  courage,  conscience,  and  a  guide  divine,  to 
sustain  him  lest  he  faint. 

And,  after  all,  in  spite  of  the  inertia  of  their  will, 
men  are,  in  their  inmost  hearts,  on  the  side  of  God, 
rather  than  their  own,  in  this  matter.  They  know  it 
would  be  a  bad  thing  for  them  to  have  nothing  to 


418  THE    GOOD    SOLDIER    OF    JESUS   CHRIST. 

resist.  They  would  like  it,  but  they  could  not  honor 
it ;  and  in  proportion  as  it  was  comfortable,  it  would 
be  contemptible.  They  have  always  paid  their  most 
willing  homage  to  those  who  have  refused  to  sit 
down  and  break  bread  with  evil  things,  and  have 
made  a  battle-field  of  life.  Even  out  of  the  primi- 
tive conflict  with  brute  Nature,  in  which  rocks  were 
split,  and  monsters  tamed,  they  evoked  a  God ;  and 
under  the  name  of  Hercules,  invented  an  excuse 
for  their  first  and  simplest  worship.  No  sooner  is 
this  physical  contest  closed,  and  the  earth  compelled 
to  yield  a  roadway  and  a  shelter  to  men,  than  the 
scene  of  struggle  is  changed,  and  they  come  into  con- 
flict with  each  other.  Instead  of  dead  resistance 
they  encounter  living  force ;  from  obstructive  matter 
their  competitor  rises  to  aggressive  mind ;  and  who- 
ever shows  himself  master  of  the  higher  qualities  de- 
manded in  the  collision,  for  justice'  sake,  of  man  with 
man,  —  the  fixed  resolve,  the  dauntless  courage,  the 
subjection  of  appetite,  the  sympathy  with  the  weak 
and  the  oppressed,  — is  honored  by  all  as  a  hero,  and 
remembered  by  his  nation  as  its  pride.  But  when 
the  game  of  war  is  done,  it  is  found  that  in  struggling 
to  a  firm  and  established  order  of  society,  men  have 
not  got  rid  of  all  their  foes  and  driven  evil  from  off 
their  world.  Inward  corruption  may  waste  what  out- 
ward assault  could  not  destroy.  Amid  the  luxuries 
and  repose  of  peace,  the  springs  of  moral  hardihood 
become  enfeebled ;  guilty  negligence,  indulgent  laxity, 
plausible  selfishness,  and  even  greedy  hypocrisy,  eat 
into  the  world's  heart.  A  secret  spirit  of  temptation, 
too  powerful  for  its  degeneracy,  hovers  over  it,  and 
threatens  to  darken  it  into  a  Hell ;  when  lo !  at  the 
crisis  of  its  fate,  there  comes  forth  one  to  meet  and 


IHE    GOOD    SOLDIEK    OF    JESUS    CHKIST.  419 

to  defy  even  this  Invisible  Fiend  of  moral  evil,  and 
by  the  wonders  of  prayer  and  toil  and  sorrow,  make 
Lucifer,  as  lightning  fall  from  heaven  ;  —  one,  far  dif- 
ferent from  the  Strong  Arm  that  subdues  creation, 
and  the  Brave  Heart  that  conquers  men  ;  being  the 
Divine  Soul  that  puts  to  flight  the  hosts  of  Satan, 
and  as  the  leader  and  perfecter  of  Faith,  pushes  the 
victories  of  men  into  the  only  unconquered  realm,  — 
the  shadowy  domain  of  Sin  and  its  dread  prisons  of 
Remorse.  Thus  the  primitive  conflict  with  nature, 
which  makes  a  Hercules,  rises  into  the  conflict  with 
man,  which  makes  the  hero,  and  culminates  in  that 
infinitely  higher  conflict  with  the  spirit  of  Evil  which 
is  impersonated  in  Christ.  We  instinctively  do  hom- 
age in  some  sort  to  them  all ;  only  admiring  the  for- 
mer as  manly ;  and  reverencing  the  last  as  god-like. 
And  it  may  be  remarked  that,  as  the  world  has 
passed  through  these  several  stages  of  strife  to  pro- 
duce a  Christendom ;  so  by  relaxing  in  the  enterprises 
it  has  learnt,  does  it  tend  downwards,  through  in- 
verted steps,  to  wildness  and  the  waste  again.  Let 
a  people  give  up  their  contest  with  moral  evil ;  dis- 
regard the  injustice,  the  ignorance,  the  greediness, 
that  may  prevail  among  them,  and  part  more  and 
more  with  the  Christian  element  of  their  civilization  ; 
and,  in  declining  this  battle  with  Sin,  they  will 
nevitably  get  embroiled  with  men  Threats  of  war 
and  revolution  punish  their  unfaithfulness ;  and  if 
then,  instead  of  retracing  their  steps,  they  yield  again 
and  are  driven  before  the  storm ;  —  the  very  arts  they 
had  created,  the  structures  they  had  raised,  the  usages 
they  had  established,  are  swept  away ;  '  in  that  very 
day  their  thoughts  perish.'  The  portion  they  had  re- 
claimed from  the  young  earth's  ruggedness  is  lost ; 


420  THE    GOOD    SOLDIER    OF    JESUS    CHRIST. 

and  failing  to  stand  fast  against  man,  they  finally 
get  embroiled  with  Nature,  and  are  thrust  down  be- 
neath her  ever-living  hand. 

The  law  of  conflict  which  God  thus  terribly  pro- 
claims in  the  history  of  nations,  is  no  less  distinctly 
legible  in  the  moral  life  of  individuals.  In  an  old  and 
complicated  structure  of  society,  the  number  is  multi- 
plied of  those  who  exist  in  a  state  of  benumbed  habit; 
who  walk  through  their  years  methodically,  not  find- 
ing it  needful  to  be  more  than  half  awake  ;  who  take 
their  passage  through  human  life  in  an  easy  chair, 
and  no  more  think  of  any  self-mortifying  work  than 
of  the  ancient  pilgrimage  on  foot ;  and  are  so  pleased 
with  the  finish  and  varnish  of  the  world  around  them, 
as  to  fancy  demons  and  dangers  all  cleaned  out, 
and  thus  the  perfected  customs,  the  smooth  mac- 
adamized ways  of  life,  which  are  all  excellent  as  facili- 
ties for  swifter  activity,  have  the  effect  of  putting 
activity  to  sleep ;  the  means  of  helping  us  to  our 
proper  ends,  become  the  means  of  our  wholly  forget- 
ting them  ;  and  looking  out  of  the  windows,  we  leave 
behind  the  commission  on  which  we  are  sent,  and  set 
up  as  travellers  for  pleasure.  This  kind  of  peril  is  the 
peculiar  temptation  which  besets  all,  and  makes  im- 
beciles of  many,  in  an  artificial  community  like  ours. 
The  battle  of  life  is  not  now,  so  often  as  of  old,  thrust 
upon  us  from  without ;  it  does  not  give  us  the  first 
blow,  which  it  were  poltroonery  to  fly  ;  but  it  is  inter- 
nal and  invisible ;  it  has  to  be  sought  and  found  by 
voluntary  enterprise ;  it  is  not  with  palpable  flesh 
and  blood  beneath  the  sun,  but  with  viewless  spirits, 
that  cling  to  us  in  the  dark.  To  capture  the  appetites, 
and  make  them  content  with  their  proper  servitude  ; 
to  change  the  heart  of  ambition,  and  turn  its  aspiring 


THE    GOOD    SOLDIEE.    OF    JEST7S    CHRIST.  421 

eye  from  the  lamp  of  heathen  glory  to  the  starlight 
of  a  Christian  sanctity ;  to  seize  anger  and  yoke  it 
under  curb  of  reason  to  the  service  of  justice  and  of 
right ;  to  lash  the  sluggish  will  to  quicker  and  more 
earnest  toil ;  to  charm  the  dull  affections  into  sweeter 
and  more  lively  moods,  and  tempt  their  timid  shyness 
to  break  into  song  and  mingle  voices  with  the 
melody  of  life  ;  to  rouse  pity  from  its  sleep,  and  com- 
pel it  to  choose  a  task  and  begin  its  plan  ;  —  all  this 
implies  a  vigilance,  a  devotion,  an  endurance,  which, 
though  only  natural  to  the  '  good  soldier  of  Jesus 
Christ,'  are  beyond  the  mark  of  the  sceptics  and 
triflers  of  the  present  age. 

I  have  said  sceptics  and  triflers.  And  be  assured 
the  conjunction  is  true  and  natural  The  shrinking 
from  difficulty,  the  dread  of  ridicule,  the  love  of  ease, 
which  drain  off  the  sap  of  a  man's  moral  earnestness, 
soon  dry  up  the  sources  of  all  moral  faith  from  the 
very  roots  of  him.  Though  in  one  sense  it  is  true 
that  he  must  believe  before  he  acts,  yet  assuredly  he 
will  not  long  go  on  believing,  when  he  has  ceased  to 
act.  The  coward  who  skulks  from  the  fight  mutters, 
as  he  retires,  that '  there  is  really  nothing  worth  fight- 
ing for.'  And  those  who  decline  the  high  battle  of 
the  Christian  life  persuade  themselves,  that  there 
is  no  worthy  field,  no  peremptory  call,  no  dreadful 
foe ;  and  the  clarion  of  God  which  pierces  and  in- 
spires faithful  souls  is  no  more  to  them  than  the  pipe 
of  hypocrites.  The  plain  of  prophet's  warfare,  where 
every  step  should  be  circumspect,  becomes  in  their 
eyes  a  soft  and  fruitful  stroll;  and  the  sins  which 
good  men  have  spent  themselves  in  driving  back, 
turn  out  to  be  the  pleasantest  companions,  of  whom 
it  was  quite  a  bigotry  to  think  harm.  Instances  of 
86 


422  THE    GOOD    SOLDIER    OF    JESUS    CHKISX. 

this  kind  of  self-sophistication  must  have  presented 
themselves  to  the  observation  of  all.  They  plainly 
show,  that  any  truth  a  man  ceases  to  Jive  by  neces- 
sarily becomes  to  him,  if  he  only  persevere,  an  entire 
falsehood.  God  insists  on  having  a  concurrence  be- 
tween our  practice  and  our  thought.  If  we  proceed 
to  make  a  contradiction  between  them,  he  forthwith 
begins  to  abolish  it ;  and  if  the  Will  does  not  rise  to 
the  Reason,  the  Reason  must  be  degraded  to  the 
Will.  This  is  no  other  than  that  '  giving  over  of 
men  to  a  reprobate  mind,'  by  which  '  the  truth  of  God 
is  changed  into  a  lie.' 

It  is  needless  to  point  out  the  several  devices  by 
which  practical  unfaithfulness  contrives  to  bring 
about  speculative  unbelief.  They  are  almost  as 
various  as  the  individual  minds  producing  them  ;  and 
agree  only  in  their  result;  viz.  the  loss  of  all  moral 
earnestness ;  the  decline  of  any  feeling  of  reality 
about  the  higher  ends  of  life  ;  the  disclination  to  any- 
thing that  interrupts  the  easy  play  of  Self-love  ;  and 
the  subsidence  of  the  mighty  wind  of  resolution 
which  should  sweep  direct  and  steady  through  the 
true  man's  course,  into  fitful  airs  of  affectation  and 
puffs  of  caprice.  It  is  not  the  failure  of  this  or  that 
doctrinal  conviction,  that  we  need  in  itself  lament ;  of 
this  sort  we  could  part  perhaps  with  a  good  deal  of 
helpless  trying  to  believe,  without  being  at  all  the 
worse ;  but  it  is  the  loosening  of  Moral  Faith  ;  the 
fluctuating  state  of  the  boundary  between  right  and 
wrong,  or  even  the  suspicion  of  its  non-existence  ;  the 
absence  from  men's  minds  of  anything  worth  living 
and  dying  for  ;  the  lawyer-like  impartiality,  consisting 
of  an  indiscriminate  advocacy,  for  hire  or  favor,  of 
any  cause  irrespective  of  its  goodness, — this  it  is 


THE    GOOD    SOLDIER    OF    JESUS    CHRIST.  423 

that  marks  how  we  are  drifting  away  from  our  proper 
anchorage.  We  seem  to  have  reached  an  age  of 
soft  affections  and  emasculated  conscience,  full  of 
pity  for  pain  and  disease,  of  horror  at  blood  and 
death  ;  but  doubting  whether  anything  is  wicked  that 
is  not  cruel,  and  reconciling  itself  even  to  that  on  suf- 
ficient considerations  of  advantage.  Does  the  com- 
plaint appear  too  strong  and  eager  ?  It  is,  however, 
solemn  and  deliberate ;  for  when  I  look  back  over  a 
few  years,  I  find  there  is  no  sort  of  personal  liber- 
tinism, of  domestic  infidelity,  of  mercantile  dishon- 
esty ;  no  breach  of  faith  in  States,  no  mean  dishonor 
in  officials,  no  shuffling  expediency  in  public  life ;  no 
kindling  of  national  malignity,  no  outrage  of  military 
atrocity,  no  extreme  of  theological  Jesuitry ;  which 
we  have  not  heard  excused  by  amiable  laxity,  and 
shrugged  off  into  the  dark  ;  or  palliated  in  books  en- 
joying disgraceful  popularity ;  or  defended  and  ad- 
mired by  statesmen  who  should  elevate  and  not 
deprave  a  nation's  mind.  It  is  then  too  much  to  fear, 
that  the  new  generation  may  grow  up  with  be- 
wildered vision  ;  without  the  clear  and  single  eye  of 
conscience  full  of  light ;  and  therefore  without  the 
resolute  and  hardy  will  of  one  who  plainly  sees  what 
he  is  to  avoid  and  what  attain  ?  There  is  a  remarka- 
ble intellectual  subtlety  engaged  now-a-days  in  per- 
plexing men's  moral  convictions.  On  the  one  hand, 
there  is  the  celebrated  doctrine  of  happiness,  in- 
geniously spun  into  a  logical  texture,  to  entangle 
those  who  are  neither  fine  enough  to  pass  through  its 
meshes,  nor  strong  enough  to  rend  them  ;  —  the  doc- 
trine which  assures  you  that  enjoyment  is  the  great 
end  of  existence,  and  is  the  only  real  element  of 
worth  in  the  objects  of  our  choice.  Of  this  I  will  say 


424  THE    GOOD    SOLDIEK    OF    JESUS    CHBIST. 

no  more  at  present,  than  that  it  plainly  makes  all 
duty  a  matter  of  taste,  and  reduces  the  distinction 
between  evil  and  good  to  the  difference  between  pills 
and  peaches ;  and  that  it  puts  an  end  to  the  spirit 
of  moral  combat  of  human  life,  and  metamorphoses 
the  '  good  soldier  of  Jesus  Christ '  into  one  knows 
not  what  strange  sort  of  mock-heroic  insincerity.  At 
the  feet  of  Epicurus  a  man  must  needs  lay  the  Chris- 
tian armor  down ;  for  one  can  hardly  fancy  the  most 
logical  of  mortals  tying  on  a  breast-plate  of  faith, 
seeking  the  battle-field,  and  fighting  —  to  be  happy. 

But  there  is  a  more  insidious  doctrine  than  this, 
largely  infused,  from  the  philosophy  of  a  neighboring 
country,  into  the  literature  of  the  age ;  a  doctrine 
not  of  the  appetites,  but  of  the  imagination  ;  not  the 
utilitarian  but  the  aesthetic,  contrary  of  the  true  faith 
of  Duty.  This  would  persuade  us,  that  the  moral 
Faculty  is  all  very  well  as  one  of  the  elements  of 
human  nature ;  is  highly  respectable  in  its  proper 
place  among  the  rest,  and  could  not  be  absent  with- 
out leaving  a  grievous  gap,  interruptive  of  the  sym- 
metry of  the  man ;  but  that  it  must  aspire  to  no 
more  than  this  modest  participation  with  its  com- 
panions in  the  perfection  of  our  being;  that  it  must 
not  presume  to  meddle  with  what  does  not  belong 
to  it,  or  refuse  to  make  liberal  concessions  to  the 
demands  of  beauty,  expediency  and  self-love  ;  and 
that  it  would  be  very  narrow-minded,  or,  in  fashion- 
able phrase,  very  one-sided,  to  try  everything  before 
the  tribunal  of  this  solitary  power.  Here  also,  only 
under  more  artful  disguise,  is  a  complete  denial  of 
all  responsibility.  Something,  it  is  true,  appears  to 
be  allowed  to  conscience  ;  a  part  is  given  it  to  play ; 
and  the  point  professedly  disputed  is  not  its  existence 


THE    GOOD    SOLDIER    OF    JESUS    CHRIST.  425 

with  an  appropriate  function,  but  its  exclusive  pre- 
tensions and  absolute  authority.  Unhappily,  how- 
ever, when  this  much  is  discarded,  it  is  only  in 
semblance  that  anything  remains.  A  moral  faculty 
with  a  merely  concurrent  jurisdiction,  or  from  whose 
decisions  there  is  some  appeal,  is  a  palpable  self- 
contradiction.  As  well  might  we  propose  to  frame 
a  government  without  any  one  highest.  Conscience 
is  authority,  —  divine  authority,  —  universal  author- 
ity ;  or  it  is  nothing.  It  is  a  right-royal  power,  that 
cannot  stoop  to  serve  ;  dethrone  it,  and  it  dies.  Not 
even  can  it  consent  to  be  acknowledged  as  a  '  citizen- 
king,'  chosen  by  the  suffrages  of  equals,  open  to  their 
criticism,  and  removable  at  their  pleasure.  Either  it 
must  be  owned  as  bearing  a  sacred  and  underived 
sovereignty,  against  which  argument  is  impiety,  and 
dreams  of  redress  incur  the  penalties  of  treason ;  or 
it  will  decline  the  earthly  sceptre  and  retire  to  heaven. 
It  reigns  not  by  the  acquiescent  will  of  other  powers, 
but  is  supreme  by  nature  over  all  Will :  nor  rules 
according  to  any  given  law,  being  itself  the  fountain 
of  all  law,  the  guardian  of  order,  the  promulgator  of 
right.  Its  prerogatives  are  penetrating  and  para- 
mount, like  God.  In  the  noble  words  of  an  old 
writer,  '  Of  (moral)  Law  there  can  be  no  less  ac- 
knowledged, than  that  her  seat  is  the  bosom  of 
God,  her  voice  the  harmony  of  the  world  :  all  things 
in  heaven  and  earth  do  her  homage,  the  very  least  as 
feeling  her  care,  the  greatest  as  not  exempted  from 
her  power ;  both  angels  and  men,  and  creatures  of 
what  condition  soever,  though  each  in  different  sort 
and  manner,  yet  all  with  uniform  consent,  admiring 
her  as  the  mother  of  their  peace  and  joy.'* 

*  Hooker's  Ecclesiastical  Polity  :  end  of  B.  I. 
36* 


126  THE    GOOD    SOLDIER    OF    JESUS    CHRIST. 

Let  none  then  prevail  with  us  to  think,  that  there 
is  any  period  of  life,  or  any  sphere  of  our  activity,  or 
any  hour  of  our  rest,  which  can  escape  the  range  of 
right  and  wrong,  and  be  secluded  from  the  eye  of 
God.  Not  that  we  need  grow  stiff  with  the  posture 
of  unnatural  vigilance,  or  assume  the  circumspection 
of  a  scwipulous  and  anxious  mind ;  that  would  only 
show  that  the  formal  and  obedient  will  was  yet  hard 
and  dry;  that  it  was  chiselled  still  into  fitting  shapes 
by  the  severe  tool  of  care,  instead  of  flowing  down 
into  the  graceful  moulds  of  a  loving  and  trustful 
heart.  The  rule  of  a  divine  spirit  over  our  whole 
nature  is,  in  truth,  of  all  things  the  most  natural ;  — 
natural  as  the  blossom  that  crowns  the  tree,  without 
which  it  would  miss  half  its  beauty,  and  all  its  fruit. 
Nothing  can  be  more  offensive  to  a  good  mind  than 
the  eagerness  to  claim,  for  some  portions  of  our  time, 
a  kind  of  holiday-escape  from  the  presence  of  duty 
and  the  consecration  of  pure  affections ;  to  thrust  off 
all  noble  thoughts  and  sacred  influences  into  the 
most  neglected  corner  of  existence ;  and  drive  away 
Religion,  as  if  it  were  a  haggard  necromancer  that 
must  some  time  come,  instead  of  a  guardian-angel 
that  must  never  go.  It  were  shameful  to  sanction 
the  low-minded  sentiment  which  so  often  says  of 
early  life,  that  it  is  the  time  for  enjoyment,  and 
makes  this  an  excuse  for  dispensing  with  everything 
else,  and  declining  all  demands  upon  the  hardness  of 
'  the  good  soldier  of  Jesus  Christ.'  According  to  the 
canons  of  this  wretched  criticism,  Life  would  have 
no  secret  unity ;  it  would  be  the  sacred  Epic,  sung 
throughout  by  any  constant  inspiration  ;  but  a  mon- 
ster of  incongruity ;  its  first  volume  a  jest-book ;  its 
second,  a  table  of  interest ;  and  its  last,  a  mixture  of 


THE    GOOD    SOLDIER    OF    JESTTS    CHRIST.  427 

the  satire  and  the  liturgy.  For  my  own  part,  I  can 
form  no  more  odious  image  of  human  life,  than  a 
youth  of  levity  and  pleasure,  followed  by  a  maturity 
and  age  of  severity  and  pietism.  Both  sights,  in  this 
succession,  are  alike  deplorable :  a  young  soul  with- 
out wonder,  without  reverence,  without  tenderness, 
without  inspiration  ;  with  superficial  mirth,  and  deep 
indifference  ;  standing  on  the  threshold  of  life's  awful 
temple,  with  easy  smile,  without  uncovered  head,  or 
bended  knee,  or  breathless  listening!  Is  that  the 
time,  do  you  say,  for  enjoyment?  Yes;  —  and  for 
enthusiasm,  for  conviction,  for  depth  of  affection,  and 
devotedness  of  will ;  and  if  there  be  no  tints  of  heaven 
in  that  morning  haze  of  life,  it  will  be  vain  to  seek 
them  in  the  staring  light  of  the  later  noon.  And 
therefore  is  that  other  sight  most  questionable,  of 
religion  becoming  conspicuous  first  in  mid-life,  and 
presenting  itself  as  the  mere  precipitate  from  the 
settling  of  the  young  blood.  Every  one  may  have 
noticed  examples  of  men,  long  spending  their  best 
powers,  the  mellow  heart,  the  supple  thought,  the 
agile  will,  in  the  service  of  themselves,  —  at  length 
with  the  retreating  juices  of  nature  and  sin,  baked  by 
the  drying  heats  of  life  into  the  professing  saint ;  — 
like  the  rotting-tree,  simply  decaying  into  the  gro- 
tesque semblance  of  something  human  or  ghostly, 
which  is  no  product  of  its  proper  vitality,  and  does 
but  mimic  other  natures  when  the  functions  have 
departed  from  its  own.  Who  can  avoid  looking  on 
such  cases  with  a  somewhat  suspicious  eye?  If  in- 
deed the  youth  has  been  intrinsically  noble,  it  is  not 
for  us  to  deny,  that  some  under-current  thence,  after 
seeming  lost  in  dark  caverns  of  the  earth,  may  re- 
appear to  fertilize  the  meadows,  and  raise  the  sweet 


THE    GOOD    SOLDIER    OF    JESUS    CHRIST. 

after-grass,  of  autumnal  life.  But  it  is  not  often  that 
truth  can  allow  the  interpretation  thus  suggested  by 
hope  and  charity.  Usually  the  religion  thus  embraced 
is  taken  up,  less  because  it  is  heartily  believed  and 
trusted,  than  because  a  distrust  has  arisen  of  every- 
thing else.  It  is  the  penance  of  an  uneasy  mind  ;  a 
memorial  for  pardon  addressed  as  to  an  enemy,  not 
the  quest  of  shelter  with  an  Eternal  friend.  Vainly 
shall  we  attempt  to  get  the  wages  of  a  campaign  that 
has  not  been  fought,  and  seize  the  crown  of  mastery, 
without  having  '  contended  lawfully.'  The  repose  of 
honest  victory  can  only  follow  the  strife  of  noble  con- 
flict ;  and  the  true  peace  of  God  is  the  appointed 
pension  of '  the  good  soldier  of  Jesus  Christ.' 


XXXIV. 

THE    REALM    OF    ORDER. 
1  CORINTHIANS  xiv.  33. 

GOD   IS   NOT   THE   AUTHOR   OF   CONFUSION,   BUT   OF   PEACE,   AS   IN   ALL 
CHURCHES   OF   THE   SAINTS. 

IN  the  production  and  preservation  of  order,  all 
men  recognize  something  that  is  sacred.  We  have 
an  intuitive  conviction  that  it  is  not,  at  bottom,  the 
earliest  condition  of  things ;  that  whatever  is,  rose  out 
of  some  dead  ground-work  of  confusion  and  nothing- 
ness, and  incessantly  gravitates  thitherwards  again ; 
and  that,  without  a  positive  energy  of  God,  no  uni- 
verse could  have  emerged  from  the  void,  or  be 
suspended  out  of  it  for  an  hour.  There  is  no  task 
more  indubitably  divine  than  the  creation  of  beauty 
out  of  the  chaos,  the  imposition  of  law  upon  the 
lawless,  and  the  setting  forth  of  times  and  seasons 
from  the  stagnant  and  eternal  night.  And  so,  the 
Bible  opens  with  a  work  of  arrangement,  and  closes 
with  one  of  restoration;  looks  round  the  ancient 
firmament  at  first,  and  sees  that  all  is  good,  and 
surveys  the  new  heavens  at  last,  to  make  sure  that 
evil  is  no  more.  Far  back  in  the  old  Eternity,  it 
ushers  us  into  God's  presence;  and  he  is  engaged  in 
dividing  the  light  from  the  darkness,  and  shaping  the 
orbs  that  determine  days  and  years;  turning  the 


430  THE    REALM    OF    ORDER. 

vapors  of  the  abyss  into  the  sweet  breath  of  life, 
teaching  the  little  grass  to  grow,  and  trusting  the 
forest  tree  with  the  seed  that  is  in  itself,  to  be  punc- 
tually dropped  upon  the  earth;  filling  the  mountain 
slope,  the  sedgy  plain,  the  open  air,  the  hidden  deep, 
with  various  creatures  kept  by  happy  instincts  within 
the  limits  of  his  will ;  and  setting  over  all,  in  likeness 
of  himself,  the  adapting  intellect,  the  affectionate 
spirit,  and  mysterious  conscience,  of  lordly  and  re- 
flective man.  The  birth  of  order  was  the  first  act  of 
God,  who  rested  not  till  all  was  blessed  and  sancti- 
fied. And  far  forward  in  the  Eternity  to  come,  we 
are  brought  before  his  face  again  for  judgment. 
The  spoiling  of  his  works,  the  wild  wandering  from 
his  will,  he  will  bear  no  more ;  the  disorder  that  has 
gathered  together,  shall  be  rectified;  he  will  again 
divide  the  darkness  from  the  light;  and  confusion 
and  wrong,  —  all  that  hurts  and  destroys, —  shall  be 
thrust  into  unknown  depths;  while  wisdom  and  holi- 
ness shall  be  as  the  brightness  of  the  firmament  and 
as  the  stars  forever  and  ever.  As  it  was  when  he 
was  Alpha,  so  will  it  be  when  he  is  Omega.  He  is 
one  that  "loveth  pureness"  still;  and  the  stream  of 
Providence,  —  the  river  that  went  out  of  Eden, — 
however  foul  with  the  taint  of  evil  while  it  takes  its 
course  through  human  history,  shall  become  the  river 
of  the  water  of  life,  clear  as  crystal,  that  nurtures  the 
secret  root  of  all  holy  and  immortal  things. 

This  Divine  regard  for  order  proceeds  from  an 
attribute  in  which  we  also  are  made  to  participate, 
and  which  puts  us  into  awful  kindred  with  his  per- 
fections. Intelligent  Free-will, —  a  self-determining 
Mind,  —  is  the  only  true,  orignating  Cause  of  which 
we  can  even  conceive;  the  sole  power  capable  of 


THE    EEALM    OF    ORDER.  431 

giving  Law  where  there  was  none  before,  and  of 
creating  the  Necessity  by  which  it  is  thenceforth 
obeyed.  There  was  a  Will  before  there  was  a  Must. 
Nothing  else,  we  feel  assured,  could  avail,  amid  a 
boundless  primeval  unsettledness,  to  mark  out  a 
certain  fixed  method  of  existence,  and  no  other,  and 
make  it  to  be;  could  draw  forth  an  actual,  defined, 
and  amenable  universe  from  the  sphere  of  infinite 
possibilities.  The  indeterminate,  the  chaotic,  lies  in 
our  thought  behind  and  around  the  determinate  and 
constituted ;  and  to  sketch  a  positive  system  and  bid 
its  vivid  lines  of  order  shine  on  the  dark  canvas  of 
negation,  is  the  special  office  of  the  free,  self-moving 
spirit,  whereby  God  lifts  us  up  above  nature  into  the 
image  of  himself.  Hence  we  too,  in  proportion  as 
we  approach  him,  shall  put  our  hand  to  a  light  task; 
shall  organize  the  loose  materials  that,  touched  by  a 
creative  will,  may  cease  to  be  without  form  and  void ; 
shall  set  out  expanse  of  years  into  periods  ruled  by 
the  lights  of  duty,  and  refreshed  by  the  shades  of 
prayer;  shall  mould  every  shapeless  impulse,  subdue 
every  rugged  difficulty,  fill  every  empty  space  of 
opportunity  with  good,  and  breathe  a  living  soul  into 
the  very  dust  and  clod  of  our  existence.  As  '  God  is 
not  the  author  of  confusion,  but  of  peace,'  so  the 
service  of  God  infuses  a  spirit  of  method  and  propor- 
tion into  the  outward  life  and  the  inward  mind;  and 
pure  religion  is  a  principle  of  universal  order. 

No  two  things  indeed  can  be  more  at  variance  with 
each  other,  than  a  devout,  and  an  unregulated  life. 
Devotion  is  holy  regulation,  guiding  hand  and  heart; 
a  surrender  of  self-will,  —  that  main  source  of  uncer- 
tainty and  caprice, — and  a  loving  subordination  to 
the  only  rule  that  cannot  change.  Devotion  is  the 


432.  THE    KEALM    OF    ORDER. 

steady  attraction  of  the  soul  towards  one  luminous 
object,  discerned  across  the  passionate  infinite,  and 
drawing  thoughts,  deeds,  affections,  into  an  orbit 
silent,  seasonal,  and  accurately  true.  In  a  mind 
submitted  to  the  touch  of  God,  there  is  a  certain 
rhythm  of  music,  which,  however  it  may  swell  into 
the  thunder  or  sink  into  a  sigh,  has  still  a  basis  of 
clear  unbroken  melody.  The  discordant  starts  of 
passion,  the  whimsical  snatches  of  appetite,  the  in- 
articulate winnings  of  discontent,  are  never  heard; 
and  the  spirit  is  like  an  organ,  delivered  from  the 
tumbling  of  chance  pressures  on  its  keys,  and  given 
over  to  the  hand  of  a  divine  skill.  Nay,  so  inexorable 
is  the  demand  of  religion  for  order,  that  it  shrinks 
from  any  one  allowed  irregularity,  as  the  musician 
from  a  constant  mistake  in  the  performance  of  some 
heavenly  strain.  Its  perpetual  effort  is  to  prevail 
over  all  things  loose  and  turbid;  to  swallow  up  the 
elements  of  confusion  in  human  life;  and  banish 
chance  from  the  soul;  as  God  excludes  it  from  the 
universe.  It  is  quite  impossible  that  an  idle,  float- 
ing spirit  can  ever  look  with  clear  eye  to  God ; 
spreading  its  miserable  anarchy  before  the  symmetry 
of  the  creative  Mind;  in  the  midst  of  a  disorderly 
being,  that  has  neither  centre  nor  circumference, 
kneeling  beneath  the  glorious  sky,  that  everywhere 
has  both;  and  for  a  life  that  is  all  failure,  turning  to 
the  Lord  of  the  silent  stars,  of  whose  punctual  thought 
it  is,  that  'not  one  faileth.'  The  heavens,  with  their 
everlasting  faithfulness,  look  down  on  no  sadder  con- 
tradiction, than  the  sluggard  and  the  slattern  in  their 
prayers. 

To  maintain  the  sacred  governance  of  life  is  to 
recognize  and  preserve  the  due  rank  of  all  things 


THE    REALM    OF    ORDER.  433 

within  and  without.  For  there  is  a  system  of  ranks 
extending  .through  the  spiritual  world  of  which  we 
form  a  part.  The  faculties  and  affections  of  the  single 
mind  are  no  democracy  of  principles,  each  of  which, 
in  the  determinations  of  the  will,  is  to  have  equal 
suffrage  with  the  rest;  but  an  orderly  series,  in  which 
every  member  has  a  right  divine  over  that  below. 
The  individuals  composing  the  communities  of  men 
do  not  arrange  themselves  into  a  dead  level  of  spirits, 
in  which  none  are  above  and  none  beneath ;  but 
there  are  centres  of  natural  majesty  that  break  up  the 
mass  into  groups  and  proportions  that  you  cannot 
change.  And  man  himself,  by  the  highest  Will,  is 
inserted  between  things  of  which  he  is  lord,  and 
obligations  which  he  must  serve.  In  short,  the  hie- 
rarchy of  nature  is  Episcopalian  throughout;  and  in 
conforming  to  its  order,  the  active  part  of  our  duty 
consists  in  this;  that  we  must  rule  and  keep  under 
our  hand  whatever  is  beneath  us;  assigning  to  every- 
thing its  due  place. 

The  whole  scheme  of  our  voluntary  actions,  all 
that  we  do  from  morning  to  night  of  every  day,  is 
beyond  doubt  entrusted  to  our  control.  No  power, 
without  our  consent,  can  share  the  monarchy  of  this 
realm,  or  constrain  us  to  lift  a  hand  or  speak  a  word, 
where  Resolution  bids  us  be  still  and  silent.  And 
from  our  inmost  consciousness  we  do  know,  that, 
whenever  we  will,  we  can  make  ourselves  execute 
whatever  we  approve,  and  strangle  in  its  birth  what- 
ever we  abhor.  To-morrow  morning,  if  you  choose 
to  take  up  a  spirit  of  such  power,  you  may  rise  like  a 
soul  without  a  past;  fresh  for  the  future  as  an  Adam 
untempted  yet;  disengaged  from  the  manifold  coil 
of  willing  usage,  and  with  every  link  of  guilty  habit 
37 


434  THE    BEALJI    OF    ORDER. 

shaken  off.  I  know,  indeed,  that  you  will  not;  that 
no  man  ever  will;  but  the  hindrance  is  with  yourself 
alone.  The  coming  hours  are  open  yet,  —  pure  and 
spotless  receptacles  for  whatever  you  rnay  deposit 
there;  pledged  to  no  evil,  secure  of  no  good;  neither 
mortgaged  to  greedy  passion,  nor  given  to  generous 
toil.  There  they  lie  in  non-existence  still ;  ready  to  be 
organized  by  a  creative  spirit  of  beauty,  or  made  foul 
with  deformity  and  waste.  Perhaps  it  is  this  thought, 
this  secret  sense  of  moral  contingency,  that  gives  to 
so  simple  a  thing  as  the  beat  of  a  pendulum,  or  the 
forward  start  of  the  finger  on  the  dial,  a  solemnity 
beyond  expression.  The  gliding  heavens  are  less 
awful  at  midnight  than  the  ticking  clock.  Their 
noiseless  movement,  undivided,  serene,  and  everlast- 
ing, is  as  the  flow  of  divine  duration,  that  cannot 
affect  the  place  of  the  eternal  God.  But  these  sharp 
strokes,  with  their  inexorably  steady  intersections,  so 
agree  with  our  successive  thoughts,  that  they  seem 
like  the  punctual  stops  counting  off  our  very  souls 
into  the  past;  —  the  flitting  messengers  that  dip  for 
a  moment  on  our  hearts,  then  bear  the  pure  or  sinful 
thing  irrevocably  away;  —  light  with  mystic  hopes  as 
they  arrive,  charged  with  sad  realities  as  they  depart. 
So  passes,  and  we  cannot  stay  it,  our  only  portion  of 
opportunity;  the  fragments  of  that  blessed  chance, 
which  has  been  travelling  to  us  from  all  eternity,  are 
dropping  quickly  off.  Let  us  start  up  and  live ;  here 
comes  the  moments  that  cannot  be  had  again;  some 
few  may  yet  be  filled  with  imperishable  good. 

There  is  no  conscious  power  like  that  which  a 
wise  and  Christian  heart  asserts,  when  resolved  to 
absorb  the  dead  matter  of  its  existence,  and  from  the 
elements  of  former  waste  and  decay  to  put  forth  a 


THE    REALM    OF    OEDER.  435 

new  and  vernal  life.  The  accurate  economy  of 
instants,  the  proportionate  distribution  of  duties,  the 
faithful  observance  of  law,  as  it  is  an  exercise  of 
strength,  so  gives  a  sense  of  strenuous  liberty.  Com- 
pared with  this,  how  poor  a  delusion  is  the  spurious 
freedom  which  is  the  idler's  boast!  He  says  that  he 
has  his  time  at  his  disposal;  but  in  truth,  he  is  at  the 
disposal  of  his  time.  No  novelty  of  the  moment 
canvasses  him  in  vain ;  any  chance  suggestion  may 
have  him ;  whiffed  as  he  is  hither  and  thither  like  a 
stray  feather  on  the  wandering  breeze.  The  true 
stamp  of  manhood  is  not  on  him,  and  therefore  the 
image  of  godship  has  faded  away;  for  he  is  Lord  of 
nothing,  not  even  of  himself;  his  will  is  ever  waiting 
to  be  tempted,  and  conscience  is  thrust  out  among 
the  mean  rabble  of  candidates  that  court  it.  The 
wing  of  resolution,  mighty  to  lift  us  nearer  God,  is 
broken  quite,  and  there  is  nothing  to  stay  the  down- 
ward gravitation  of  a  nature  passive  and  heavy  too. 
And  so,  first  a  weak  affection  for  persons  supplants 
the  sense  of  right;  to  be  itself,  in  turn,  destroyed  by 
a  baser  appetite  for  things.  This  woful  declension 
is  the  natural  outgoing  of  those  who  presume  to  try 
an  unregulated  life.  A  systematic  organization  of 
the  personal  habits,  devised  in  moments  of  devout 
and  earnest  reason,  is  a  necessary  means,  amid  the 
fluctuations  of  the  spirit,  of  giving  to  the  better  mind 
its  rightful  authority  over  the  worse.  Those  only 
will  neglect  it,  who  either  do  not  know  their  weak- 
ness, or  have  lost  all  healthy  reliance  on  their  strength. 
It  is  a  part  then  of  the  faithfulness  and  freedom  of 
a  holy  mind,  to  keep  the  whole  range  of  outward  ac- 
tion under  severe  control ;  to  administer  the  hours  in 
full  view  of  the  vigilant  police  of  conscience ;  and  to 


436  THE    REALM    OF    ORDER. 

introduce  even  into  the  lesser  materials  of  life  the 
precision  and  concinnity  which  are  the  natural  sym- 
bols of  a  pure  and  constant  spirit.  And  it  belongs 
to  the  humility  of  a  devout  heart,  not  to  trust  itself 
to  the  uncertain  ebb  and  flow  of  thought,  and  float 
opportunity  away  on  the  giddy  waters  of  inconstan- 
cy; but  to  arrange  a  method  of  life  in  the  hour  of 
high  purpose  and  clear  insight,  and  then  compel  the 
meaner  self  to  work  out  the  prescription  of  the 
nobler.  Yet  this,  after  all,  though  an  essential  check 
to  our  instability,  is  but  the  beginning  of  wisdom. 
The  mere  distribution  of  action  in  quantity,  however 
well  proportioned,  does  not  fulfil  the  requisites  of  a 
Christian  order.  This  surveyor's  work, — this  par- 
titioning out  the  superficies  of  life,  and  marking  off 
the  orchard  and  the  field,  the  meadow  and  the  grove, 
—  will  make  no  grass  to  grow,  will  open  no  blossom 
and  mature  no  seed.  The  seasonal  culture  of  the 
soul  requires  all  this;  yet  may  yield  poor  produce, 
when  this  is  done.  Without  the  deeper  symmetry 
of  the  spirit,  the  harmonious  working  of  living  powers 
there,  the  boundaries  of  action,  however  neat,  will  be 
but  a  void  framework,  enclosing  barrenness  and  sand. 
Despise  not  the  ceremonial  of  the  moral  life ;  it  is 
our  needful  speech  and  articulation;  but  oh!  mistake 
it  not  for  the  true  and  infinite  worship  that  should 
breathe  through  it.  Mere  mechanism,  however  perfect, 
has  this  misfortune,  that  it  cannot  set  fast  its  own 
loose  screws,  but  rather  shakes  them  into  more  fright- 
ful confusion ;  till  the  power,  late  so  smooth,  works 
only  crash  and  ruin,  and  goes  headlong  back  to 
chaos.  And  so  it  is  where  there  is  nothing  pro- 
founder  than  the  systematizing  faculty  in  the  organ- 
ization of  a  man's  life.  Destitute  of  adaptive  and 


THE    REALM    OF    ORDER.  437 

restorative  energy,  with  no  perception  of  a  spiritual 
order  that  may  remain  above  disturbance,  and  ex- 
press itself  through  obstructions  all  the  more,  inter- 
ruptions bewilder  and  upset  him.  Ill  health  in 
himself  or  the  affliction  of  others,  that  stop  his 
projects  and  give  him  pause  by  a  touch  on  his 
affections,  irritate  and  weary  him;  he  grows  dizzy 
with  the  inroads  on  his  schemes,  gives  up  the  count 
so  hopefully  begun,  and  runs  down  in  the  rapid  dis- 
cords. The  soul  of  Christian  order  has  in  it  some- 
thing quite  different  from  this ;  more  like  the  blessed 
force  of  nature  that  consumes  its  withered  leaves  as 
punctually  as  they  fall,  and  so  makes  the  spread  of 
decay  a  thing  impossible;  that  has  so  unwearied  an 
appetite  for  the  creation  of  beauty  and  productive- 
ness, that  it  makes  no  complaint  of  rottenness  and 
death,  but  draws  from  them  the  sap  of  life,  and 
weaves  again  the  foliage  and  the  fruit.  No  less  a 
vital  spontaneity  than  this  is  needed  in  the  Christian 
soul;  for  in  human  life,  as  in  external  nature,  the 
elements  of  corruption  and  disorder  are  always  accu- 
mulating; and  unless  they  are  to  breed  pestilence, 
must  be  kept  down  and  effectually  absorbed.  As  in 
science,  so  in  practical  existence,  our  theory  or  ideal 
must  ever  be  framed  upon  assumptions  only  partially 
true.  The  conditions  required  for  its  fulfilment  will 
never  be  present  all  at  once  and  all  alone ;  so  that  the 
realization  will  be  but  approximate;  and  a  constant 
tension  of  the  soul  is  needed  to  press  it  nearer  and 
nearer  to  the  ultimate  design.  For  want  of  a  reli- 
gious source,  an  exact  apparent  order  in  the  life  may 
co-exist  with  an  essential  disorder  secreted  within. 
Are  we  not  conscious  that  so  it  is,  whenever  the  toil 
of  our  hands,  though  punctually  visited,  receives  no 
37* 


438  THE    REALM    OF    ORDER. 

consent  of  our  hearts;  when  the  spirit  flies  with 
heavy  wing  from  reach  to  reach  of  time,  and,  like 
Noah's  dove,  seeing  only  wave  after  wave  of  a  dreary 
flood,  finds  no  rest  for  the  sole  of  its  foot,  till  it  gets 
back  to  the  ark  of  its  narrow  comforts?  Is  it  not 
a  plain  inversion  of  the  true  order  of  things,  when  we 
do  our  work  for  the  sake  of  the  following  rest,  in- 
stead of  accepting  our  rest  as  the  preparative  for 
work?  And  while  this  continues  to  be  the  case, 
there  will  be  a  hidden  aching,  a  dark  corroding  speck 
within  the  soul,  which  no  outward  method  or  pro- 
portion can  ever  charm  away.  Nor  can  the  precision 
of  the  will  be  even  sustained  at  all  without  the 
symmetry  of  the  affections.  As  well  might  you 
think  to  set  your  broken  compass  right  by  hand;  if  it 
be  foul  and  stiff,  swinging  and  trembling  no  more  in 
obedience  to  its  mysterious  attraction,  its  blessed 
guidance  is  gone;  and  after  the  first  straight  line 
of  your  direction,  you  sail  upon  the  chances  of  de- 
struction. 

To  prevent  this  evil,  of  method  just  creeping  up 
the  lower  part  of  life,  and  passing  no  further,  no  posi- 
tive rule,  from  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  can  well  be 
given.  We  can  only  say  that,  besides  subjecting 
whatever  is  beneath  us,  there  is  also  this  passive 
part  of  Christian  order,  that  we  must  surrender  our- 
selves entirely  to  what  is  above  us ;  and  having  put 
all  lesser  things  into  their  place,  we  must  then  take 
and  keep  our  own.  Could  indeed  this  proportion  of 
the  affections  invariably  remain,  it  would  supersede 
all  our  mechanism,  and  take  care  of  the  outward 
harmony;  and  we  should  have  no  need  to  apply  the 
rules  of  a  Franklin  to  the  spirit  of  a  Christ.  But 
even  short  of  this  blessed  emancipation,  we  should 


THE    REALM    OF    OKDEE.  439 

rise  into  a  higher  atmosphere ;  escaping  the  wretched 
thraldom  of  reluctant  duties ;  and  yield  a  free  con- 
sent, through  love,  to  that  which  else  were  irksome ; 
quietly  depositing  ourselves  on  every  work  that 
brings  its  sacred  claim,  and  moving  in  it,  instead  of 
writhing  to  get  beyond  it.  They  tell  you  that  habit 
reconciles  you  in  time  to  many  unwelcome  things. 
Let  us  not  trust  to  this  alone.  Custom  indeed 
sweetens  the  rugged  lot  when  the  cheerful  soul  is  in 
it;  it  does  but  embitter  it  the  more,  when  the  soul 
stays  out  of  it.  But  when  harshnesses  are  borne,  and 
even  spontaneously  embraced,  for  the  sake  of  God 
who  hints  them  to  our  conscience,  a  perfect  agree- 
ment ensues  between  the  spirit  and  the  letter  of  our 
life.  We  feel  no  weariness ;  delivered  now  from  the 
intolerable  burthen  of  flagging  affections.  We  are 
disturbed  by  no  ambitions;  conscious  of  no  jealousies 
of  other  men ;  for  competition  has  no  place  in  things 
divine;  and  even  in  lower  matters,  it  is,  to  the 
thoughtful  and  devout,  but  a  quiet  interrogation  of 
Providence ;  and  the  true  heart  that  prefers  the  ques- 
tion cannot  be  discontented  with  the  answer.  We 
cease  to  desire  a  change;  we  feel  that  life  affords  no 
time  for  restlessness ;  that  in  persistency  is  our  only 
hope ;  and  a  blessed  conservatism  of  spirit  comes 
over  us,  that  claims  nothing  but  simple  leave  to  go 
on  serving  and  loving  still.  And  so  Existence,  to 
the  devout,  becomes,  not  confused,  but  peaceful,  like 
a  Service  in  the  Churches  of  the  Saints. 


XXXV. 

CHRISTIAN    DOCTRINE    OF  MERIT. 
LUKE  xvn.  10. 

SO  LIKEWISE  YE,  WHEN  YE  SHALL  HAVE  DONE  ALL  THOSE  THINGS 
WHICH  ARE  COMMANDED  YOU,  SAY,  '  WE  ARE  UNPROFITABLE  SER- 
VANTS ;  WE  HAVE  DONE  THAT  WHICH  WAS  OUR  DUTY  TO  DO.' 

To  a  thoughtful  interpreter  of  human  nature,  no- 
thing so  plainly  reveals  the  hidden  principle  of  a 
man's  life,  as  the  estimation  in  which  he  holds  him- 
self. Whether  the  standard  which  guides  him  be 
conventional,  moral,  or  divine ;  whether  the  invisible 
presence  that  haunts  him  be  that  of  the  world's 
opinion,  or  his  own  self-witness,  or  the  eye  of  God, 
—  may  be  seen  in  the  contented  self-delusion,  or  in- 
telligent self-knowledge,  or  noble  self-forgetfulness, 
which  reveal  themselves  through  his  natural  language 
and  demeanor.  Too  often  you  meet  with  a  man 
who  manifestly  looks  at  himself  with  the  eyes  of 
others ;  —  and  those  too,  not  the  wise  who  are  above 
him,  but  the  associates  on  the  same  level  or  the  in- 
feriors beneath  it,  to  whom  he  may  be  supposed  an 
object  of  conspicuous  attention.  He  stands  well 
with  himself,  because  he  stands  well  with  them;  and 
nothing  would  make  him  angry  with  himself,  except 
the  forfeiture  of  his  position  among  them.  Their 
expectations  from  him  being  satisfied,  or  somewhat 


CHRISTIAN    DOCTRINE    OF    MERIT.  441 

more,  he  thinks  his  work  is  done,  and  turns  loose 
into  a  holiday  life,  to  do  as  he  likes  at  his  own  un- 
licensed will.  Their  sentiments  are  the  mirror,  by 
which  he  dresses  up  his  life ;  as  his  self-complacency 
is  but  the  reflection  of  their  smiles,  his  self-reproach 
is  but  the  imitation  of  their  frowns, —  mere  regret  for 
error,  not  remorse  for  wrong;  overheard  in  the  cry  of 
vexation,  '  Fool  that  I  am ! '  not  in  the  whisper  of 
penitence,  'God  be  merciful  to  me  a  sinner!'  He 
every  way  impresses  you  with  the  conviction  that,  if 
nothing  were  demanded  of  him,  nothing  would  be 
given ;  that  he  simply  comes  into  the  terms  imposed 
by  men  as  conditions  of  peace  and  good  fellowship; 
and  did  all  men  resemble  him,  the  Cynic's  theory 
would  not  be  far  wrong,  that  morality  is  but  the 
conciliation  of  opinion,  and  society  a  company  for 
mutual  protection. 

However,  if  all  men  were  such  as  he,  and  brought 
no  strictly  moral  element  into  human  affairs,  it  is 
plain  that  this  much-vaunted  power  of  'public  opin- 
ion' could  never  get  formed.  Till  somebody  has  a 
conscience,  nobody  can  feel  a  law.  Accordingly,  we 
everywhere  meet  with  a  higher  order  of  men,  who 
not  only  comprehend  the  wishes,  but  respect  the 
rights,  of  others ;  who  are  ruled,  not  by  expectation 
without,  but  by  the  sense  of  obligation  within;  who 
do,  not  the  agreeable,  but  the  just;  and,  even  amid 
the  storm  of  public  rage,  can  stand  fast,  with  rooted 
foot  and  airy  brow,  like  the  granite  mountain  in  the 
sea.  Noble,  however,  as  this  foundation  of  upright- 
ness always  is,  there  may  arise  from  it  a  self-estimate 
too  proud  and  firm.  If  the  stern  consciousness  of 
right  have  no  softening  of  human  affection,  and 
kindling  of  diviner  aspiration,  it  will  give  the  lofty 


342  CHRISTIAN    DOCTEINE    OF    MEIIIT. 

sense  of  personal  merits,  that  makes  the  Stoic,  and 
misses  the  Saint.  To  walk  beneath  the  porch  is  still 
infinitely  less  than  to  kneel  before  the  cross.  We  do 
nothing  well,  till  we  learn  our  worth ;  nothing  best, 
till  we  forget  it.  And  this  will  not  be  till,  besides 
being  built  into  the  real  veracious  laws  of  this  world, 
we  are  also  conscious  of  the  inspection  of  another ; 
till  we  live,  not  only  fairly  among  equals,  but  sub- 
missively under  the  Most  High ;  and  while  casting 
the  shadow  of  a  good  life  on  the  scene  below,  lie  in 
the  light  of  vaster  spheres  above.  Virtue,  feeling  its 
deep  base  in  earth,  lifts  its  head  aloft;  sanctity,  con- 
scious of  its  far-off  glimpse  at  heaven,  bends  it  low. 
And  yet,  outwardly,  they  are  not  different,  but  the 
same ;  one  visible  character  may  correspond  with 
either;  only  standing  amid  relations  incomplete  in  the 
one  case,  completed  in  the  other.  They  are  but  as  the 
different  aspects  of  the  granite  isle  of  which  we  spake. 
Let  clouds  roof  out  the  heaven  and  shut  a  darkness  in, 
and  its  gray  crags  look  down,  with  the  grandeur  of  a 
gloomy  monarch,  sheltering  the  thunder  and  defying 
the  flood.  Sweep  the  rack  away,  and  throw  upon  the 
hemisphere  of  morning  air,  and  it  lies  low  in  the  soft 
light,  and  sleeps  with  upturned  gaze,  like  a  sunny 
child  of  deep  arid  sky,  cradled  on  the  summer  sea. 

How  is  it  that  minds  equally  engaged  in  the  outward 
service  of  duty,  think  of  themselves  so  differently? 
Whence  the  self-reliance,  bordering  on  self-exaggera- 
tion, of  a  Zeno,  a  Franklin,  a  Bentham? — the  divine 
humility  of  a  Pascal,  a  Howard,  a  Channing,  and  of 
the  Master  whose  lineaments  they  variously  reflect? 
The  answer  will  present  itself  spontaneously,  if  we 
inquire  into  the  true  doctrine  of  merit.  This  word, 
which  has  its  equivalent  in  every  language,  expresses 


CHRISTIAN    DOCTRINE    OF    MERIT.  343 

a  meaning  familiar,  I  suppose,  to  all  men;  and  by 
referring  to  a  few  common  modes  of  speech  and 
thought,  the  contents  of  that  meaning  may  be  un- 
folded and  defined. 

There  is  no  merit  in  paying  one's  debts.  To  make 
such  an  act  a  ground  of  praise  infallibly  betrays  a 
base  mind  and  a  dishonest  community.  This  can- 
not well  be  denied  by  any  clear-thoughted  man,  free 
from  the  influence  of  passion.  Whatever  be  the 
practice  of  society  with  respect  to  the  insolvent,  sure- 
ly it  is  a  mean  perversion  of  the  natural  moral  sense 
to  imagine  that  his  temporary  inability,  or  length  of 
delay,  can  cancel  one  iota  of  his  obligation;  these 
things  only  serve  to  increase  its  stringency ;  tardy  re- 
paration being  a  poor  substitute  for  punctual  fidelity. 
I  am  far  from  denying  that  circumstances  of  special 
and  blameless  misfortune  may  justify  him  in  accept- 
ing the  voluntary  mercy  of  friends  willing  to  '  forgive 
him  all  that  debt.'  But  whoever  avails  himself  of 
mere  legal  release  as  a  moral  exemption,  is  a  candi- 
date for  infamy  in  the  eyes  of  all  uncorrupted  men. 
The  law  necessarily  interposes  to  put  a  period  to  the 
controversy  between  debtor  and  creditor,  and  prohibit 
the  further  struggle  between  the  arts  of  the  one  and 
the  cruelty  of  the  other;  but  it  cannot  annul  their 
moral  relation.  Obligation  cannot,  any  more  than 
God,  grow  old  and  die ;  till  it  is  obeyed,  it  stops  in 
the  present  tense,  and  represents  the  eternal  Now. 
Time  can  wear  no  duty  out.  Neglect  may  smother 
it  out  of  sight;  opportunity  may  pass,  and  turn  it 
from  our  guardian  angel  into  our  haunting  fiend;  but 
while  it  yet  remains  possible,  it  clings  to  our  identity, 
and  refuses  to  let  us  go.  It  was  the  first  sign  of 
the  rich  publican's  change  from  the  heathen  to  the 


444  CHRISTIAN    DOCTRINE    OF    MERIT. 

Christian  mind  that  he  'restored  four-fold'  the  gains 
that  were  not  his.  And  our  conversion  yet  remains 
to  be  wrought,  until,  instead  of  applauding  as  of 
high  desert  the  man  who  repairs  at  length  the  mis- 
chief he  has  done,  we  condemn  to  shame  every  one 
who  can  buy  an  indulgence  with  an  unpaid  debt. 

Again,  there  is  no  merit  in  speaking'  or  acting'  the 
simple  truth;  in  keeping  one's  promissory  word,  and 
doing  one's  stipulated  work.  In  this  there  is  no 
more  than  all  men  are  entitled  to  expect  from  us.  It 
is  their  manifest  right;  and  if,  instead  of  respecting 
its  demands,  we  give  them  falsehoods  with  our  lips 
and  life,  we  not  merely  lose  all  claim  to  their  praise, 
but,  sinking  far  from  innocence,  become  obnoxious 
to  their  reproach.  From  this  rule  there  are,  no  doubt, 
many  apparent  departures  in  the  practical  conduct  of 
human  affairs;  and  we  often  make  it  a  theme  for 
public  eulogy  that  a  citizen  has  lived  among  us  with 
unbroken  pledge  and  faithful  achievement.  This, 
however,  is  hardly  an  example  of  the  strict  and  un- 
mixed judgment  of  conscience,  but  rather  a  conces- 
sion from  that  pity  and  fear  with  which  we  look  on 
human  nature  tried  with  so  long  a  strife.  It  springs 
up  on  the  retrospect  of  an  entire  Life  with  its  visible 
temptations  prostrated  and  its  strength  triumphant; 
and  would  be  put  to  silence  by  a  single  instance  of 
evident  bad  faith.  Moreover,  in  cases  of  such  un- 
violated  truth,  there  is  always  something  more  than 
simple  abstinence  from  wrong.  They  imply,  by  their 
very  persistency,  a  force  of  character,  which  cannot 
have  spent  itself  in  mere  standing  still,  however 
firm.  The  man  who,  under  all  deflecting  importu- 
nities, can  keep  an  immovable  footing  against  the 
wrong,  has  a  life  within  him  that,  when  the  assault 


CHKISTIAX    DOC1KIXE    OF    MEBIT.  445 

is  over,  will  push  on  the  victories  of  right;  and  we 
justly  accept  the  negative  strength,  as  symptomatic 
of  the  positive  power  of  conscience.  On  this  account 
it  is  that  we  honor  him  who  never  lies,  nor  cheats, 
nor  stoops  to  mean  evasions;  not  that  it  would  be 
otherwise  than  shameful  if  he  did;  but  to  be  through- 
out clear  of  all  such  shame  is  the  sign  that  he  has 
not  a  passive,  but  a  productive  soul;  and  we  praise 
him  for  what  he  is,  rather  than  for  what  he  is  not. 

Once  more;  there  is  no  merit  in  restraining-  the 
appetites  from  excess;  in  the  avoidance  of  intem- 
perance and  waste;  in  freedom  from  wild  and  self- 
destructive  passions,  that  bear  the  soul  away  on  a 
whirlwind  it  cannot  rule.  We  expect  of  every  man, 
that  he  shall  remain  master  of  himself;  and  we  feel 
that  he  does  not  reach  the  natural  level  of  his  human- 
ity, unless  he  governs  what  he  knows  to  be  beneath 
him,  and  as  '  a  faithful  and  wise  steward,'  manifests 
a  moral  prudence  in  administering  the  domain  of  its 
own  spirit.  A  well-ordered  economy  of  the  personal 
habits  brings  so  evident  a  return  of  value  to  those 
who  practise  it,  and  is  so  fit  a  consequence  of  the 
natural  rights  of  reason  over  the  will,  that  it  is  rather 
the  assumed  ground  and  indispensable  condition, 
than  the  actual  essence,  of  any  excellence  we  can 
honor  and  revere.  If  ever  we  bestow  upon  it  more 
than  a  cold  commendation,  it  is  in  cases  where  it 
may  be  taken  as  a  pledge  of  something  further,  that 
does  not  directly  meet  the  eye ;  where  it  appears,  for 
instance,  amid  examples  of  guilty  license,  and  in- 
ducements to  a  low  and  lax  career;  and  can  only 
have  grown  up  by  the  triumph  of  pure  and  divine 
energy  within,  under  the  obstructions  of  circumstance 
and  the  contradictions  of  men.  But  except  when  we 
38 


416  CHRISTIAN    DOCTIUNE    OF    MERIT. 

thus  find  some  saint  amid  the  brood  of  Circe,  we 
deem  it  but  poor  praise  to  a  human  soul,  that  it  is 
not  like  the  brutes,  the  creature  of  impulse  and  slave 
of  chance  affection. 

From  these  instances  it  is  easy  to  collect  one  of 
the  essential  characteristics  of  all  merit.  There  is  no 
room  for  it  in  the  sphere  of  personal  and  prudential 
conduct;  it  can  arise  only  in  the  case  of  duty  to 
others.  And  there  it  obtains  no  admission,  so  long 
as  we  merely  satisfy  the  claims  of  justice,  and  com- 
ply with  that  which  law  or  honor  have  written  in  the 
bond.  Failing  in  this,  we  incur  guilt  and  the  merit; 
not  failing,  we  are  entitled  to  no  praise.  The  first 
entrance  of  merit,  according  to  the  sentiments  of  all 
men,  is  where  our  performance  goes  beyond  the  ac- 
knowledged rights  of  another;  and  we  spontaneously 
offer  what  human  obligation  could  not  ask. 

There  is  a  second  characteristic  admitted  to  be 
essential  to  every  meritorious  act.  It  must  be  all 
our  oivn,  the  spontaneous  product  of  our  individual 
will  and  affection.  If  in  the  delirium  of  fever,  or  the 
fancies  of  somnambulism,  you  are  led,  by  the  com- 
mand of  some  guide  who  wields  you  at  his  word,  to 
put  forth  a  deed  of  outward  charity,  you  will  take  no 
more  credit  for  it,  than  for  the  heroic  achievements 
you  may  accomplish  in  your  dreams.  You  had  no 
more  to  do  with  the  act  than  with  the  sin  of  Lucifer. 
You  were  not  the  agent  in  the  case;  you  were  only 
the  stage  on  which  the  phenomenon  took  place. 
And  show  me  in  any  instance,  that  a  man  is  not 
the  originating  cause  of  his  own  apparent  deed,  but 
in  this  manifestation  of  him,  only  an  effect  of  some 
extraneous  power;  show  me  that  he  would  never  have 
done  the  kindly  thing,  had  he  not  been  put  up  to  it 


CHRISTIAN    DOCTRINE    OF    MERIT.  447 

by  a  force  that  pulls  the  wires  of  his  obedient  mind ; 
show  me  even,  that  he  had  some  personal  end  in 
view,  and  proposed  to  make  an  investment  in  gener- 
osity ;  —  and  it  is  in  vain  that  you  ask  for  my  admi- 
ration ;  as  soon  could  I  respect  the  industry  of  a  clock, 
or  the  industry  of  a  galvanized  limb.  If  the  prompter 
once  peeps  out,  I  know  the  whole  to  be  a  piece  of 
acting,  and  the  illusion  of  reality  is  instantaneously 
gone ;  only,  instead  of  the  avowedly  fictitious,  I  have 
the  insidiously  false,  and  am  the  dupe,  not  of  pro- 
fessed entertainment,  but  of  real  deception.  Sponta- 
neity then  is  an  essential  to  each  man's  good  desert; 
and  in  precise  proportion  to  the  partnership  there 
may  be  in  his  agency,  will  be  the  diminution  of  his 
share. 

Here  then  we  have  the  two  requisites  and  charac- 
teristics of  every  meritorious  act;  it  must  overlap  the 
limits  of  mere  justice,  and  go  beyond  the  strict  rights 
of  the  being  to  whom  it  is  directed ;  and  it  must  be 
all  our  own.  Take  away  either  of  these  properties, 
and  merit  disappears. 

Now  it  is  the  characteristic  of  all  Moral  systems, 
as  such,  that  they  allow  the  reality  of  human  merit; 
of  all  religious  systems,  as  such,  and  of  the  simply 
religious  heart  that  has  no  system  at  all,  that  they 
disown  it.  The  different  forms  of  faith,  however,  do 
this  in  different  ways;  and  the  following  distinction 
is  to  be  carefully  observed;  —  the  spurious  represen- 
tations of  Christianity  take  away  all  demerit  at  the 
same  time ;  while  the  true  have  in  them  this  mystery, 
that  while  they  remove  the  lustre  of  merit,  the  sha- 
dow of  demerit  remains. 

Every  Fatalist  or  Predestinarian  scheme  destroys 
merit  by  denying  that  our  actions  are  our  own,  and 


448  CHRISTIAN    DOCTRINE    OF    MERIT. 

referring  them  wholly  to  powers  of  which  we  are 
not  lords  but  slaves.  We  are  ourselves,  it  is  con- 
tended, true  creators  of  nothing;  but  creatures,  ab- 
solutely disposed  of  by  mightier  forces,  like  clay 
whirled  upon  the  potter's  wheel,  and  moulded  by  his 
hand;  —  determinate  products  turned  out  from  the 
great  workshop  of  the  universe,  with  functions  pure- 
ly mechanical,  like  a  more  complex  kind  of  tool. 
That  we  seem  to  have  a  self-moving  power,  to  put 
forth  spontaneous  and  underived  effort  belonging 
wholly  to  our  personality,  is,  in  the  view  of  this  doc- 
trine, an  illusion  of  our  short-sightedness,  due  only  to 
our  ignorance  or  forgetfulness  of  the  prime  mover  of 
our  energies.  All  this,  like  the  heaving  of  a  steam- 
engine,  or  the  laboring  of  a  ship  at  sea,  is  done  for 
and  upon  us,  not  by  us;  and  when,  in  our  remorse 
for  the  past,  and  our  resolves  for  the  future,  we  as- 
sume that  we  are  in  a  responsible  trust  for  our  own 
spiritual  state,  we  are  dupes  of  an  ignorant  delu- 
sion, at  which  philosophic  spirits  stand  by  and  smile. 
Fast  locked  within  the  series  of  natural  effects,  we 
are  the  ground  on  which  phenomena  appear  for 
their  display,  but  not  their  cause;  the  inventor  and 
exhibitor  stands  behind  the  scenes,  and  shows  us 
off'.  Life,  in  short,  is  but  the  long  phantasm  of 
the  sleep-walker;  replete  with  the  consciousness  of 
nimble  thoughts,  and  vivid  passions,  and  precari- 
ous glories  and  strenuous  deeds,  —  a  perfect  con- 
flict of  awful  forces  to  him  that  is  within  it ;  but  to 
the  eye  of  waking  truth  outside,  still  and  passive 
as  the  sculptured  slumber  of  a  marble  image;  a 
casket  of  mimic  battles  and  ideal  woes.  With  the 
particular  sources  of  fallacy  in  this  scheme,  I  have 
not  now  any  direct  concern.  I  merely  wish  to  point 


CHRISTIAN    DOCTRINE    OF    MERIT. 


449 


out  that,  as  it  is  destructive  of  any  proper  Agency  in 
the  human  being,  it  annihilates  at  once  proper  merit 
and  demerit;  sinks  man  from  a  person  into  a  thing; 
loses  all  moral  distinctions,  by  representing  character 
as  an  incident  in  one's  lot,  like  health  or  disease, 
the  color  of  the  hair  or  the  robustness  of  the  limbs ; 
and  renders  obligation  altogether  impossible.  And 
so,  along  with  the  inflation  of  self-righteousness, 
which  it  certainly  excludes,  this  scheme  carries  away 
also  the  healthful  sorrow  of  remorse.  Its  humility  is 
not  the  moral  consciousness  of  unworthiness  of  char- 
acter, but  the  physical  sense  of  incapacity  of  nature; 
and  the  disciple  looks  on  himself,  not  as  the  fallen 
angel,  but  as  the  ennobled  animal. 

Now,  with  all  this  Christianity  appears  to  me  to 
stand  in  strongest  contrast.  It  annihilates  merit,  not 
by  reducing  obligation  to  nothing,  but  by  raising  it  to 
infinitude.  Leaving  us  the  originating  causes  of  our 
own  acts,  as  we  had  always  supposed  ourselves  to 
be,  —  confirming  us  fully  in  the  partnership  we  thus 
enjoy  with  the  creative  energy  of  God,  —  it  resists  all 
enchroachment  on  our  responsibility.  But  then  it 
takes  away  from  us  the  other  element  of  merit.  It 
renders  it  impossible  for  our  performance  to  overlap 
and  exceed  the  claims  upon  our  will.  For,  it  changes 
the  relations  in  which,  with  a  conscience  simply 
looking  round  over  the  level  of  our  equals,  we  had 
felt  ourselves  to  stand.  Putting  us  under  Heaven  as 
well  as  upon  the  earth,  within  the  presence  and  sanc- 
tuary of  God,  while  we  are  at  the  hearths  of  our 
friends  and  in  the  streets  with  our  fellows,  it  swal- 
lows up  our  duties  to  them  in  one  immense  sphere  of 
duty  to  him.  Into  all  our  transactions  with  them,  it 
introduces  a  new  and  awful  partner,  to  whom  we 
88* 


450  CHRISTIAN    DOCTRINE    OF    MERIT. 

cannot  say,  '  Thou  hast  no  business  between  them 
and  us;  if  we  satisfy  each  other,  stand  thou  aloof!' 
As  the  holy  prompter  of  our  conscience,  and  guardian 
of  their  claims,  he  must  be  omnipresent  with  his  in- 
terpositions. To  him  therefore  our  religion  makes 
over  all  their  rights;  and  thereby  not  only  consecrates 
and  preserves  them,  but  gives  them  boundless  exten- 
sion. Instantly,  we  discern  as  a  true  demand  upon 
us,  a  thousand  things  which  before  we  had  fancied 
to  be  at  our  discretion,  and  to  redound  to  our  praise, 
if  we  conceded  them.  Charity  merges  into  justice; 
love  and  pity  are  offsprings  that  may  not  be  with- 
held; and  every  former  gift  becomes  a  debt.  All 
good  that  is  not  impossible  is  a  thing  now  due,  and 
is  to  be  performed,  not  like  eye-service  unto  men,  but 
as  to  God ;  a  solemn  transfer  of  responsibilities  has 
taken  place,  and  all  our  doings  are  with  the  Highest 
now;  and,  beyond  his  acknowledged  rights  we  can 
never  go,  so  as  to  deserve  anything  of  him.  Towards 
him  obligation  is  strictly  infinite;  it  covers  all  our 
possibilities  of  achievement:  for,  the  very  circum- 
stance of  any  good  and  noble  thing  being  possible, 
and  revealed  to  our  hearts  as  such,  constitutes  and 
creates  it  a  duty.  Thus  suggested,  it  is  one  of  the 
trusts  committed  to  us  by  God,  —  the  work  which 
he,  the  great  spiritual  Artificer,  puts  into  his  true 
laborer's  hands  to  execute ;  to  keep  the  material, 
and  not  weave  the  texture,  of  his  designs,  were  a 
fase  and  unfaithful  thing.  Now,  when  we  have 
completed  it,  can  we  establish  any  title  to  even  the 
most  insignificant  reward.  For,  what  are  wages 
after  all  ?  Are  they  not,  in  effect,  the  laborer's 
share  of  the  produce  created,  only  paid  in  anti- 
cipation of  the  finished  task,  —  an  advance  founded 


CHRISTIAN    DOCTRINE    OF    MERIT.  451 

on  his  right  to  subsist  while  he  toils?  And  do 
they  not  cancel  all  his  claim  to  participate  after- 
wards in  the  product  of  his  skill?  This  perpetual 
loan  by  which  he  lives,  and  which  he  works  off 
by  exertion  ever  renewed,  he  cheerfully  accepts  in 
discharge  of  all  his  rights.  And  what  recompenses 
are  ever  prepaid  so  freely  as  those  of  God?  He 
waits  not  for  a  week's,  not  even  for  a  moment's 
industry,  but  is  beforehand  with  us  every  way. 
We  have  never  earned  the  living  which  he  gives 
us  in  this  world;  we  cannot  plead  that  we  have  a 
right  to  be.  The  field  and  the  faculty  of  work  are 
alike  furnished  forth  by  him.  A  little  while  ago, 
and  we  were  not  here;  a  little  while  again  and  we 
shall  be  gone  from  our  place;  and  have  we  not 
then  been  wholly  set  up  at  our  post  in  this  universe 
by  our  great  Taskmaster?  and  does  he  not,  by 
the  fact  of  existence  itself,  make  us  his  perpetual 
debtors  ?  Yes ;  the  successive  moments,  as  they 
pass,  are  the  counters  of  his  constant  payment; 
which  we  can  neither  reckon  nor  refuse,  but  only 
hasten  to  seize  and  to  employ.  And  so,  it  is  im- 
possible for  us  ever  to  overtake  his  advances.  With 
our  fastest  speed  they  fly  before  us  still,  like  the 
shadow  which  his  light  behind  us  casts,  only  length- 
ening as  we  go,  till  it  stretches  over  the  brink  of 
time,  and  covers  the  abyss  of  eternity.  Resign  we 
then  every  high  pretension,  and  stand  with  bended 
and  uncovered  head  of  self-renunciation;  grateful  for 
every  blessing  God  may  send;  eager  for  all  the  work 
he  may  appoint;  but  saying,  when  all  is  done,  '  We 
are  unprofitable  servants;  we  have  done  that'  alone, 
and,  alas !  far  less,  '  which  it  was  our  duty  to  do.' 


XXXVI. 

THE   CHILD'S  THOUGHT. 
1  CORINTHIANS  xin.  11. 

WHEN  I  WAS  A  CHILD,  I  SPAKE  AS  A  CHILD,  I  UNDERSTOOD  AS  A  CHILD, 
I  THOUGHT  AS  A  CHILD  ;  BUT  WHEN  I  BECAME  A  MAN,  I  PUT  AWAY 
CHILDISH  THINGS. 

THE  noblest  prophets  and  apostles  have  been  chil- 
dren once ;  lisping  the  speech,  laughing  the  laugh, 
thinking  the  thought  of  boyhood.  Undistinguished 
as  Paul  then  was  amid  the  crowd,  unless  by  more 
earnest  and  confiding  eye,  there  was  something  pass- 
ing within  him  of  which,  it  would  seem,  he  preserved 
in  the  kindling  moments  of  his  manly  soul,  the  mem- 
ory and  the  trace.  And  there  are  few  men,  I  suppose, 
who  do  not  at  times  send  a  gentle  glance  into  their 
early  days  ;  not  only  looking  upon  faces  vanished 
now,  and  listening  to  voices  that  have  become  as 
distant  music  to  the  mind ;  but  remembering  the 
throbbing  pulse  of  their  own  hopes,  and  the  strain 
of  heroic  purpose,  and  the  awful  step  of  wonder 
unabated  yet.  Between  ourselves  and  the  apostle, 
however,  there  is  an  expressive  difference  here.  We 
usually  turn  from  the  past  with  a  sigh,  and  a  secret 
sense  of  irrevocable  loss ;  he,  with  hands  clasped  in 
thanksgiving,  as  the  glory  of  an  infinite  gain.  We 
envy  our  own  children  ;  and  would  fain  put  back  the 


THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT.  453 

shadow  on  our  dial,  to  feel  again  the  morning  sun 
that  shines  so  softly  upon  them  ;    he  springs  with 
glad  escape  out  of  hours  too  recent  from  the  night, 
and  welcomes  the  increasing  glow  of  an  eternal  day. 
To  us  the  chief  beauty,  the  only  sanctities  of  life,  are 
apt  to  appear  in  the  shelter  of  our  early  years  :  they 
are  like  a  home  that  we  have  deserted,  a  love  that  we 
have  lost,  a  faith  cheated  from  our  hearts.     As  we 
ascend  the  mountain-chain  of  life,  so  long  a  towering 
mystery  to  our  uplifted  eye,  they  lie  beneath  as  the 
green  hollow  of  the  Alpine  valley ;  to  whose  native 
fields,  return  is  cut  off  forever ;  whence  the  incense 
of  our  faith  went  straight  up  to  heaven,  like  the  first 
smoke  from  the  village  hearths  into  the  clear,  calm 
air ;  whose  sunny  grass  thaws  the  very  heart  of  us, 
nipped  by  the  glacier's  keenest  breath  ;  whose  stately 
trees,  still  dotting  the  ground  with  points  of  shade, 
seem  to  leave  us  more  exposed  amid  the  scant  and 
stunted  growths  of  this  wintry  height ;  and  whose 
church-peal  floating   faintly   on   the   ear,  makes   us 
shudder  ail  the  more  at  the  bleak  winds  near,  boom- 
ing  in  icy  caverns,  or  whispering  to  the   plains   of 
silent  snow.     But  Paul,  though  not  untouched  per- 
haps by  the  poetry  of  childhood,  regarded  it  without 
regret.     With  him,  its  inspiration  had  risen,  not  de- 
clined ;  its  unconscious  heaven  had  not  retreated,  but 
pressed  closer  on  his  heart,  till  it  had  mingled  with 
his  nature,  and  articulately  spoken  to  itself.     He  was 
not  going  up  into  life  to  lose  himself  amid  the  relent- 
less elements,  and    get   buried  by  the  avalanche   of 
years  in  chasms  of  Fate  ;  but  to  conquer  Nature  and 
look  down ;   to  stand  upon   her  higher  and  higher 
watch-towers,  till  he  found  a  way  clear  into  the  cli- 
mate of  the  skies;  and,  like  Moses  on  Mount  Nebo, 


454  THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT. 

with  '  his  eye  not  dim,'  could  discern  at  the  pointing 
of  God, '  the  whole  land '  of  life  '  unto  the  utmost  sea  ; ' 
—  and  then  pass  where  no  horizon  bounds  the  view. 
We,  too  often,  in  putting  away  childish  things,  part 
with  the  wrong  elements  ;  losing  the  heavenly  insight, 
keeping  the  earthly  darkness.  We  put  away  the 
guileless  mind,  the  pure  vision,  the  simple  trust,  the 
tender  conscience ;  and  reserve  the  petty  scale  of 
thought,  the  hasty  will,  the  love  of  toys  and  strife. 
Paul  put  away  only  the  ignorance  and  littleness  of 
childhood,  bearing  with  him  its  freshness,  its  truth,  its 
God,  into  the  grand  work  of  his  full  age.  And  hence, 
while  our  religion  lies  somewhere  near  our  cradle  and 
is  a  kind  of  sacred  memory,  his  lived  on  to  speak  for 
itself  instead  of  being  talked  about.  It  fought  all  his 
conflicts ;  it  took  the  weight  out  of  his  chains ;  it  con- 
densed the  lightning  of  his  pen  ;  and  kindled  the 
whole  furnace  of  his  glorious  nature. 

There  is  a  natural  difference  between  the  religion 
of  childhood,  of  youth,  and  of  maturity,  which  appears 
to  be  very  much  overlooked  in  our  expectations  and 
practices  with  regard  to  each.  The  human  mind  is 
not  the  same  in  all  periods  of  its  history ;  its  wants, 
its  faculties,  its  affections,  shift  their  relative  propor- 
tions, as  that  history  proceeds ;  and  a  power,  which, 
like  religion,  is  to  hover  over  it  continually,  and  to  lift 
it  by  a  constant  attraction,  must  not  always  suspend 
itself  over  the  same  feelings,  and  offer  one  invariable 
representation.  Its  resources  are  infinite  ;  its  beauty 
inexhaustible;  its  truth  dipped  in  every  color  into 
which  the  light  of  heaven  is  broken  by  the  prism  of 
Thought;  and  it  must  adapt  itself  to  the  character- 
istics of  every  period  which  needs  its  sway.  Nor 
is  there  the  least  art  or  cunning  policy  implied  it 


THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT.  455 

this  ;  but  only  a  soul  of  natural  sympathy,  to  take  on 
it  at  will  the  burthens  of  the  child,  the  youth,  the 
man  ;  to  see  their  love,  their  fear,  their  admiration ; 
to  doubt  their  doubts,  and  pray  their  prayers  ;  and 
simply  to  avoid  the  cruelty  of  offering  the  garment  of 
grief  to  the  spirit  of  joy,  and  singing  songs  to  the 
heavy  heart.  Some  features  belonging  to  the  early 
period  of  life,  which  should  be  borne  in  mind  in  the 
conduct  of  the  religious  element  of  education,  I 
would  briefly  indicate. 

Childhood  is  emphatically  the  period  of  safe  in- 
stincts ;  permitting  it  to  try  awhile  the  unreflective 
life  of  creatures  less  than  human.  Only  the  ingenuity 
of  artificial  corruption  can  spoil  them.  In  themselves, 
they  are  incapable  of  excess,  and  offer  few  tempta- 
tions to  wrong,  that  are  not  adequately  counteracted 
by  some  balancing  affection.  They  simply  ask  to  be 
let  alone,  and  surfer  no  perversion ;  give  them  room 
to  open  out ;  use  no  premature  compression  to  drive 
them  back  ;  and  they  will  check  each  other,  and  find 
a  fairer  proportion  than  can  be  given  by  your  rules. 
In  these  shrewd  days,  in  which  it  has  become  the 
cleverest  thing  to  suspect  the  Devil  everywhere,  and 
God  nowhere,  it  is  thought  romantic  to  believe  in 
the  innocence  of  childhood  ;  pardonable  perhaps  in  a 
woman,  but  an  intolerable  softness  in  a  man.  And 
possibly  it  is,  if  applied  to  the  actual  children,  once 
born  in  the  image  of  God,  but  long  ago  twisted  into 
our  miserable  likeness,  by  the  sight  of  our  luxuries, 
the  contagion  of  our  selfishness,  the  hearing  of  our 
lies ;  possibly  it  is,  if  applied  to  those  whom  the 
church  teaches  to  blaspheme  their  own  nature,  to 
confess  a  sham  guilt,  and  prate  of  an  unreal  rescue 
from  an  unfelt  danger.  For,  the  world  is  often  right 


456  THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT. 

in  fact,  though  wrong  in  truth ;  and  the  church  has 
acted  with  a  cunning  theology  in  this  matter;  having 
first  spoiled  all  the  children  with  its  inanities,  and 
then  produced  them  in  its  court  in  evidence  of  origi- 
nal depravity.  But  if  both  World  and  Church  will 
only  learn  what  the  child's  simple  presence  may  teach, 
instead  of  teaching  what  he  cannot  innocently  learn, 
the  truth  may  dawn  upon  them,  that  he  seldom  re- 
quires to  be  led, —  only  not  to  be  misled.  A  reform 
in  the  nursery  will  change  the  creed  of  Christendom  ; 
no  hierarchy  can  stand  against  it;  and  the  pinafore 
of  the  child  will  be  more  than  a  match  for  the  frock  of 
the  bishop  and  the  surplice  of  the  priest.  If  it  be 
romance  to  look  with  something  of  reverent  affection 
at  the  being  not  yet  remote  from  God,  it  is  at  least  a 
romance  that  has  come  to  us  on  a  voice  most  full  of 
grace  and  truth  ;  it  breathes  fresh  from  the  hills  of 
Nazareth ;  and  its  emblem  is  that  Wondering  infant 
in  the  arms  of  Christ,  visible  thence  over  all  the  earth, 
as  the  chosen  watch  at  the  gate  of  heaven.  What- 
ever be  thought  of  this  doctrine,  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  there  is  in  early  years,  an  openness  to  habit, 
which,  while  it  quickly  punishes  our  neglect,  as 
quickly  answers  to  our  care.  No  ready-made  ob- 
struction, no  ruined  work,  is  given  us  to  undo. 
Wise  direction  alone  is  needed ;  and  such  frame- 
work and  moulding  for  the  life  as  we  may  advisedly 
construct,  wiJl  receive  the  growing  nature  as  its  silent 
occupant.  Nay,  this  is  largely  true,  not  only  of  the 
acts  of  the  hand,  but  of  the  methods  and  persuasions 
of  the  mind;  for  childhood  has  a  ready  faith,  that 
may  be  most  blessedly  used  or  most  wickedly 
abused ;  a  faith  so  open  to  the  sense  of  God,  that 
almost  unspoken,  and  as  by  look  of  holy  sympathy, 


THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT.  457 

it  may  be  given ;  so  eager,  that  it  will  seize  on  all  the 
aliment  of  thought  within  its  reach  ;  so  trustful,  that 
it  feels  no  difficulty,  and  will  cause  you  none.  Your 
problem  of  guidance  will  therefore  be,  not  so  much 
to  evade  present  embarrassments,  as  to  prevent  the 
shock  of  future  perplexities,  that  must  arise,  when 
finite  thought  attempts  to  grasp  an  infinite  faith,  and 
Reason  descends  to  find  its  own  ground,  which  it 
ever  carries  with  it  as  it  dives.  Nor  is  there  any  posi- 
tive way  of  avoiding  such  a  crisis  of  the  soul.  Only, 
there  is  a  negative  wisdom  in  not  shutting  up  the 
faith ;  in  leaving  a  place  for  future  acquisitions,  and 
verge  enough  for  the  larger  operations  of  the  mind. 
Meanwhile,  one  thing  is  to  be  immediately  and  al- 
ways observed.  Through  the  susceptibility  of  the 
religious  principle,  you  may  make  the  child  believe  in 
any  God,  from  the  Egyptian  cat  to  the  inspirer  of 
Christ.  But  there  is  only  one  God  that  can  really 
possess  him  with  an  awful  love ;  namely,  such  a  one 
as  seems  to  him  the  highest  and  the  best.  And  of 
this  there  can  be  no  constant  conception  through  life  ; 
it  changes  as  experience  deepens,  and  affections  open 
and  die  away.  Yours  cannot  be  the  same  as  his ; 
and  if  you  speak  without  sympathy,  if  you  forget 
your  different  latitude  of  mind,  you  may  repel  rather 
than  instruct,  and  give  root  to  a  choking  thorn  of 
hatred,  instead  of  a  fruitful  seed  of  love.  If  the  name 
of  God  is  to  be  sweet  and  solemn  to  young  hearts,  it 
must  stand  for  their  highest,  not  for  ours  ;  and  many 
a  phrase,  rich  and  deep  in  tone  to  us,  must  be  shun- 
ned as  sure  to  jar  on  spirits  differently  attuned.  Oh  ! 
how  many  obstructions  have  not  veracious  men  to 
remove  ere  they  can  find  their  true  religion!  How 

long  do  they  say  their  prayers,  before  they  pray,  and 
39 


458  THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT. 

hear  and  speak  of  holy  things  without  a  touch  of 
worship!  How  many  years  did  we  look  up  into 
only  damp,  uncomfortable  clouds,  that  did  but  wet 
and  darken  life,  ere  the  pure  breeze  set  in,  and  swept 
the  curtain  from  the  eternal  sky,  and  mingled  us  with 
the  genuine  night,  and  set  us  eye  to  eye  with  the 
watchful  stars !  If  when  I  thought  as  a  child,  I  had 
also  dared  to  speak  as  a  child,  should  I  not  have 
said,  '  Talk  to  me  no  more  ;  I  hate  the  name  of  God  ?  ' 
—  yet  not  the  God  that  ever  lives  and  loves,  but  the 
stiff  idol  of  the  catechism,  looking  rigorous  from  the 
narrow  niche  of  a  decaying  Puritanism.  Not  the 
God,  whose  kiss  is  in  the  light,  whose  gladness  on 
the  riding  sea,  whose  voice  upon  the  storm ;  who 
shapes  the  little  grass,  and  hides  in  the  forest,  and 
rustles  in  the  shower;  who  bends  the  rainbow,  and 
blanches  the  snow ;  for  children  delight  in  nature, 
and  from  wonder  at  its  beauty  easily  slide  into 
adoration  of  its  Lord.  Not  the  God,  who  moulded 
the  orbs  that  Newton  weighed,  and  traced  the  curves 
he  measured,  and  blended  the  colors  he  untwined ; 
who  was  on  the  earth  when  no  man  was,  and  buried 
the  tribes  now  dug  from  the  mountains  and  the 
plains;  who  thinks  at  this  moment  every  thought 
that  science  shall  develop,  and  reads  the  folded  scroll 
of  future  history  ;  for  children  delight  in  knowledge, 
and  will  kneel  with  joy  to  Him,  with  whom  it  is  at 
once  concentred  and  diffused.  Not  certainly  the  God, 
who  looked  out  upon  our  life  and  death,  our  strife  and 
sorrow,  through  the  soul  of  Christ ;  who  can  no  more 
abide  the  hypocrite  and  the  unjust  that  walk  the 
streets  to-day,  than  Jesus  the  whited  sepulchres  of 
old ;  who  lets  no  widow's  mite  escape  his  eye,  no 
grateful  heart,  though  of  the  leper  and  the  heretic,  go 


THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT.  459 

without  its  praise  ;  for  children  love  justice,  mercy, 
and  truth,  and  will  trust  themselves  freely  to  Him  in 
whom  they  dwell  beyond  degree. 

Nor  is  it  only  in  its  conception  of  God,  that  the 
faith  of  the  child  must,  differ  from  that  of  the  man. 
Its  moral  element  is  also  peculiar.  To  him  religion, 
applied  to  life,  presents  itself  exclusively  as  a  Laio,  — 
and  a  law  that  there  is  no  serious  difficulty  in  per- 
fectly obeying.  Prescribing  a  clear  scheme  of  duty, 
and  a  natural  and  delightful  state  of  affection,  it 
seems  to  him  so  simple  and  practicable,  that  he  is 
full  of  courage,  goes  forth  with  joyous  step,  and  with 
confiding  look  gazes  straight  upon  the  open  coun- 
tenance of  the  future.  He  cannot  understand  the 
penitential  strains  that  float  from  the  older  world 
around  him  ;  what  have  these  people  been  about,  that 
they  have  so  much  evil  to  bewail  ?  They  appear  to 
him  very  worthy,  nay  altogether  faithful  and  merito- 
rious, Christians ;  and  it  is  very  strange  they  should 
speak  so  grievously  to  God,  and  stand  before  him 
with  a  culprit  air  and  streaming  tears.  In  all  this, 
though  it  has  no  shadow  of  pretence,  he  cannot  join  ; 
it  come  sof  a  deeper  truth  of  nature  than  he  yet  has 
reached.  His  circle  of  life  is  narrow,  and  his  idea  of 
life  lies  quiet  within  it,  the  thing  which  he  thinks  in 
his  conscience  in  the  morning,  he  can  do  with  sedu- 
lous hand  before  night.  His  conception  of  duty  is 
legal  and  human  only,  not  spiritual  and  divine  ;  it  has 
not  yet  burst  into  transcendent  aspiration,  whose  in- 
finite glory  in  front  spreads  the  inseparable  shadow 
of  sorrow  and  ill  behind.  Sin  therefore  remains  to 
him  a  dreadful  image  from  some  foreign  world;  a 
spectre  of  horrid  witchery,  whose  incantations  over- 
flow from  the  cursing  lips  of  bad  men,  and  whose  fires 


460  THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT. 

gleam  from  their  impure  eyes.  But  it  is  a  thing  that 
is  preternatural  still ;  he  looks  at  it  outside  his  nature, 
as  haunting  history  and  the  world  ;  it  is  not  yet  a  sor- 
rowful reality  within.  His  religion  therefore  is  a  cheer- 
ful reverence ;  and  with  its  sweet  light  no  tinge  should 
mix  from  the  later  solemnity  and  inner  conflicts  of 
faith.  Let  him  take  his  vow  with  a  glad  voice  ;  if  you 
drive  him  prematurely  to  the  confessional,  you  make 
him  false.  The  matin-hymn  of  life  to  God  is  brilliant 
with  hope  and  praise;  and  without  violence  to  nature, 
you  cannot  displace  it  for  the  deep,  low-breathing 
vesper-song;  the  rosy  air  of  so  fresh  a  time  was 
never  made  to  vibrate  to  that  strain.  Even  from  the 
stony  heart  of  old  Memnon  on  the  waste,  beams  vivid 
as  the  morning  wrung  a  murmur  of  happy  melody ; 
and  only  at  the  dip  of  day  did  a  passing  plaint  float 
through  the  desert's  stately  silence.  It  is,  I  am  per- 
suaded, a  fatal  thing,  when  we  men  and  women,  who 
make  all  the  catechisms,  and  shape  all  the  doctrines, 
and  invent  all  the  language  of  Christian  faith,  force 
our  adult  religion  with  its  meditative  depth,  upon  the 
heart  of  childhood,  not  yet  capacious  enough  to  take 
it  in.  Puritanism,  —  fit  faith  for  the  stalwart  devo- 
tion of  earnest  manhood  in  grim  times, —  cannot  be 
adapted  to  the  childish  mind  ;  and  the  attempt  to  do 
so  will  inevitably  produce  distaste,  and  occasion  re- 
action. This  indeed  we  can  hardly  doubt  is  one 
great  and  permanent  cause  of  the  alternations  observ- 
able from  age  to  age,  in  the  faith  and  spirit  of  com- 
munities ;  alternations  from  enthusiasm  to  indifference, 
from  scepticism  to  mysticism,  from  the  anxieties 
of  moral  law  to  the  fervor  of  devout  love,  from  a 
religion  of  excessive  inwardness  to  one  of  outward 
rites  or  daily  work.  These  changes,  though  often 


THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT.  461 

long  in  openly  declaring  themselves,  really  and  at 
heart  take  place  by  generations.  The  true  seat  of 
the  revolution  is  in  the  nursery  and  the  school ;  the 
children  being  unable  to  receive  what  their  fathers 
insist  upon  giving ;  getting  gradually  loosened  from 
a  thing  that  never  held  them  in  the  hollow  of  its 
hand,  but  only  detained  them  by  the  skirts  of  the 
garment;  and  obliged  at  last  to  begin  anew,  and  try 
the  power  of  faith's  neglected  pole. 

As  childhood  merges  into  youth,  the  character- 
istics I  have  described  undergo  a  rapid  and  mo- 
mentous change.  The  early  security  is  gone.  The 
stronger  powers  demand  a  sterner  police  of  con- 
science to  maintain  their  peace  and  harmony.  The 
whole  soul  displays,  —  in  its  intellect,  its  desires,  its 
sentiments  of  duty, —  the  great  transition  from  the 
natural  to  self-conscious  and  reflective  existence.  A 
greater  openness  to  beauty,  a  more  spontaneous 
quickness  of  affection,  a  more  plenary  enthusiasm  for 
goodness,  combine  to  waken  up  unutterable  aspira- 
tions, and  put  upon  the  countenance  of  life,  as  it 
gazes  into  the  young  eyes,  an  expression  of  divinest 
glory.  New  conditions  are  reached  under  which  the 
simple,  light-hearted  piety  cannot  longer  stay.  Duty 
is  more  than  the  child's  task-work  now.  So  grand 
and  awful  does  it  rise,  that  it  makes  the  actual  deeds 
that  lie  beneath  look  small,  like  the  cultured  garden 
at  the  Andes'  base.  Hence,  to  even  the  most  brave 
and  buoyant  spirit,  the  sigh  that  seemed  once  so 
strange  is  not  unknown.  There  is  an  incipient  ex- 
perience of  that  sad  interval  between  conception, 
now  so  rich,  and  execution  still  so  poor,  which  traces 
the  lines  of  deepest  care  upon  the  face  of  men ;  —  not 
however  settled  yet  into  that  steady  and  wonderful 
89* 


462  THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT. 

shadow  of  guilt,  which  has  spread  over  the  purest 
and  most  strenuous  souls  of  Christendom ;  but  corn- 
ing fitfully  and  vanishing  again ;  taking  its  turn  with 
the  bold  young  faith  that  nothing  worthy  can  be  had 
to  good  resolve;  and  only  dashing  the  familiar  joy 
with  new  longings  and  repentances.  Amid  the 
fiercer  struggle  that  sets  in,  the  great  thing  needed  is 
strength  of  Moral  Denial,  the  courage  to  say  No  to 
all  questionable  men  and  unquestionable  fiends. 
Meanwhile,  the  very  faculties  of  thought  are  chang- 
ing too.  The  appetite  for  facts  is  passing  into  an 
eagerness  for  truth,  full  also  of  deep  anxieties. 
Sometimes  this  noble  passion  degenerately  tends  to 
a  disagreeable  dogmatism,  from  the  mind's  having 
lost  its  childish  source  of  trust,  and  not  yet  having 
gained  the  manly,  and  for  a  while  holding  the  faith 
neither  in  meek  dependence  on  authority,  nor  in 
genial  repose  on  the  universal  Reason  and  Con- 
science, but  by  the  little  personal  tenure  of  private 
argument.  And  sometimes,  it  is  productive  of  dark 
agonies  of  doubt  and  loneliness,  drearier  than  death ; 
leaving  the  soul  exposed  upon  the  field  of  conflict, 
without  a  God  to  strive  for,  or  a  weapon  for  the 
fight.  Happily,  however,  the  moral  struggle  of  this 
period  comes  before  the  mental;  and  is  well  over 
with  the  faithful,  ere  the  needed  strength  is  broken ; 
and  oftener  than  is  guessed,  I  am  convinced,  it  is  the 
issue  of  the  earlier  battle  of  the  Conscience,  that 
really  determines  how  the  later  strife  of  the  Intellect 
shall  end.  Men  that  have  lived  a  few  years  of  hard- 
ness for  God's  sake,  are  rarely  left  by  him  to  roam 
the  wilds  of  doubt  alone. 

It  is  not  much  perhaps  that  direct  and  purposed 
teaching  can  contribute  to  the  efficacy  of  the  religious 


THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT.  463 

sentiments.  But  its  happy  avail,  whatever  it  be, 
depends  on  its  conformity  with  the  conditions  we 
have  traced.  If  only  we  will  not  hinder,  God  has  a 
providence  most  rich  in  help.  Judge  not  the  child's 
mind  by  your  own ;  nor  fancy  that  you  have  a  re- 
ligion to  create  against  some  powerful  resistance, 
which  skill  is  needed  to  evade  or  proof  to  overcome. 
His  spirit,  if  unspoiled,  is  with  you,  not  against  you, 
when  you  speak  of  God.  Faith  is  the  natural  and 
normal  state  of  the  human  heart ;  doubt  is  its  fever- 
ish disease ;  and  that  which  may  be  the  fit  remedy  for 
your  sickness,  may  be  the  poison  of  his  health.  He 
needs  but  the  fresh  air  and  pure  nourishment  of  life ; 
give  him  not  the  pharmacopeia  of  theology,  instead 
of  the  bread  of  heaven.  Disturb  him  not  with  un- 
profitable 'Evidences;'  they  are  burdensome  as  the 
statutes-at-large  to  the  heart  of  spontaneous  justice ; 
misplaced  as  a  Court  of  Chancery  in  Heaven.  He 
has  already  the  truth  which,  at  best,  they  can  only 
have  prevented  you  from  losing;  it  is  not  the  tenure, 
but  the  scope,  of  his  belief  that  is  given  you  to  im- 
prove. And  in  your  efforts  to  enlarge  it,  it  is  well  to 
proceed  outwards  rather  than  inwards;  to  awaken 
apprehensions  of  facts,  more  than  reflection  upon 
feelings;  to  glorify  for  the  young  disciple's  eye  the 
world  around  him,  by  lifting  the  veil  from  what  is 
beautiful  in  nature  and  great  in  history;  and  not 
drive  devotion  back  upon  self-wonder  and  self-scru- 
tiny. The  attempt  to  elicit  a  religion  by  interrogat- 
ing his  consciousness,  and  to  find  in  his  heart  all  the 
mysteries  of  a  metaphysical  and  moral  experience, 
will  end  only  with  affectation  in  the  appearance,  and 
unsoundness  at  the  very  core,  of  his  nature.  The 
green  fruit  may  be  sweetened  by  confectionary  arts ; 


464  THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT. 

but  the  fermentation  of  the  oven  is  not  like  the 
ripening  of  the  sun ;  if  it  hastens  the  relish  of  the 
moment,  it  kills  the  seed  of  a  future  hope.  Scarcely 
need  the  child  know  that  he  has  a  soul;  it  is  ours  to 
take  care  that,  when  at  length  he  finds  it,  it  shall  be 
a  noble  and  august  discovery;  full  of  admirations 
never  to  be  superseded,  and  of  love  that  shall  bring 
no  repentance.  For  this  end,  his  teaching  should  be 
mainly  external  and  objective;  given  with  an  eye 
ever  fixed  on  the  true  good  which  he  most  readily 
discerns  to  be  great  and  sacred.  Let  Palestine  be  to 
him,  as  to  so  many  ages  it  has  been,  a  Holy  Land ; 
and  Jesus  in  his  gentle  majesty,  the  fixed  and  real- 
ized representative  of  God;  and  the  high  deeds  and 
souls  of  the  past  be  claimed  as  the  expressions  of  his 
will;  and  opening  glimpses  be  afforded  into  that 
natural  universe  which  he  rules  in  the  spirit  of  the 
divine  Nazarene.  Yet  withal,  the  exigencies  of  a 
more  advanced  age,  though  not  anticipated,  need 
not  be  forgotten.  Some  prospective  regard  may  be 
had  to  the  reflective  years  which  will  bring  their 
wants  at  length ;  and  without  teaching  any  present 
Theory  of  Religion,  its  future  demands  may  be 
remembered  in  a  thousand  ways.  If  you  would 
prepare,  not  a  mere  baby-house,  but  a  right  noble 
structure  of  faith,  in  which  the  soul  shall  have  a  life- 
interest,  you  will  not  only  lay  the  foundation  broad 
and  deep,  but  avoid  filling  in  with  mean  and  perish- 
able materials  the  parts,  of  which  the  childish  eye 
may  see  the  surface,  but  which  only  the  manly 
thought  can  build  in  strength.  The  unnoticed  outline 
of  system  may  be  so  drawn,  that  painful  and  de- 
forming erasures  hereafter  may  be  spared;  and  by 
mere  expansion  of  the  old  boundary,  and  insertion 


THE  CHILD'S  THOUGHT.  465 

of  new  beauty  and  new  health,  the  earnest  veracity 
of  the  philosopher  may  be  but  the  glorified  piety  of 
the  child.  As  larger  views  of  the  universe  and  life 
are  opened  out,  a  Providence  will  be  felt  to  abide 
there  still ;  the  laws  which  are  detected,  the  unsus- 
pected grandeur  that  is  revealed,  will  be  entered  in 
some  orderly  manner,  as  parts  of  the  mighty  scheme ; 
and,  instead  of  subverting  the  central  and  divine 
authority,  will  be  but  a  province  added  to  its  sway. 
And  as  the  years  of  deep  and  subjective  religion 
come,  and  the  mind  sinks  in  wonder  before  its  own 
mysteries,  the  self-consciousness,  as  it  starts  up,  will 
on  the  instant  see  God  standing  in  the  midst.  Such 
at  least  is  the  tendency  of  instruction  wisely  given. 
Still  we  must  remember  that  religion  is,  after  all, 
beyond  the  range  of  mere  tuition.  It  is  not  a  didactic 
thing  that  words  can  give,  and  silence  can  withhold. 
It  is  a  spirit;  a  life;  an  aspiration;  a  contagious  glory 
from  soul  to  soul;  a  spontaneous  union  with  God. 
Our  inward  unfaithfulness  is  sure  to  extinguish  it; 
our  outward  policy  cannot  produce  it.  To  love  and 
to  do  the  Holy  Will  is  the  ultimate  way,  not  only  to 
know  the  truth,  but  to  lead  others  to  know  it  too. 


XXXVII. 

LOOKING  UP,  AND  LIFTING  UP. 
ROMANS  xv.  1,  3. 

WE    THEN    THAT     ARE    STRONG    OUGHT   TO    BEAR    THE    INFIRMITIES   OF 

THE  WEAK,  AND   NOT    TO   PLEASE   OURSELVES  :  FOR   EVEN   CHRIST 

PLEASED   NOT    HIMSELF. 

IN  the  grouping  of  nature,  dissimilar  things  are 
invariably  brought  together,  and  by  serving  each 
other's  wants  and  furnishing  the  complement  to  each 
other's  beauty,  present  a  whole  more  perfect  than  the 
sum  of  all  the  parts.  The  world  we  live  in  is  not  a 
cabinet  of  curiosities,  in  which  every  kind  of  thing 
has  an  assortment  of  its  own,  labelled  with  its  ex- 
clusive characters,  and  scrupulously  separated  from 
objects  of  kindred  tribe.  The  free  creative  hand  dis- 
tributes its  riches  by  other  order  than  the  formal 
arrangements  of  a  museum;  and,  for  the  happy  life 
and  action  of  the  universe,  blends  a  thousand  things, 
which,  for  ends  of  knowledge  only,  would  be  kept 
apart.  A  single  natural  object  may  be  the  focus  of 
all  human  studies,  and  present  problems  to  puzzle  a 
whole  congress  of  the  wise.  A  tropical  mountain, 
for  instance,  is  a  seat  for  all  the  sciences ;  and  from 
the  snows  of  its  summit  to  the  ocean  at  its  base, 
ranges  through  every  realm  of  the  physical  world, 
and  presents  samples  of  the  objects  and  forces  pecu- 


LOOKING    UP,    AND    LIFTING    UP.  467 

liar  to  each.  Its  granite  masses  stand  up  as  the  mon- 
umental trophy  of  nature's  engineering;  while  each 
successive  stratum  piled  around  their  pedestal  is  as  a 
notch  on  the  score  and  chronicle  of  her  operations. 
Its  melting  glaciers  and  its  poised  clouds  keep  her 
chemical  register ;  showing  the  temperature  of  her 
laboratory,  and  marking  the  dew-point  every  hour. 
And  from  the  lichen  and  the  moss  that  paint  its 
upper  rocks,  through  the  fields  and  forests  of  its  slope, 
to  the  sea-weeds  that  cling  around  its  roots,  it  carries 
gradations  of  vegetable  and  animal  life  more  various 
than  can  be  told  by  the  most  accomplished  physiol- 
ogist. And  perhaps  from  some  platform  on  its  side 
the  observatory  may  be  raised ;  whence  the  astron- 
omer obtains  his  glimpse  at  other  regions  of  creation, 
surveys  the  lordly  estate  of  the  Sun  of  whom  our 
holding  is,  and  espies  the  realm  of  space  beyond, 
where  worlds  lie  thick  as  forest-leaves.  In  this,  we 
have  only  a  representation  of  the  harmonizing  method 
of  creation  everywhere,  which  combines  the  most  un- 
like things  into  a  perfect  unity.  The  several  king- 
doms of  nature,  as  we  term  them,  are  not  like  our 
political  empires,  inclosed  with  jealous  boundaries, 
thick  with  commercial  barriers,  and  bristling  with 
military  posts.  They  pervade  and  penetrate  each 
other;  they  form  together  an  indissoluble  economy; 
the  mineral  subduing  itself  into  a  basis  for  the 
organic,  the  vegetable  supporting  the  animal,  the 
vital  culminating  in  the  spiritual;  weak  things  cling- 
ing to  the  strong,  as  the  moss  to  the  oak's  trunk,  and 
the  insect  to  its  leaf;  death  acting  as  the  purveyor 
of  life,  and  life  playing  the  sexton  to  death.  Mutual 
service  in  endless  gradation  is  clearly  the  world's 
great  law. 


468  LOOKING    UP,    AXD    LIFTIXG    UP. 

In  the  natural  grouping  of  human  life,  the  same 
rule  is  found.  It  is  not  similarity  but  dissimilarity, 
that  constitutes  the  qualification  for  heartfelt  union 
among  mankind;  and  the  mental  affinities  resemble 
the  electric,  in  which  like  poles  repel,  while  the  un- 
like attract.  A  family,  —  than  which  there  is  no 
more  genuine  type  of  nature's  method  of  arrange- 
ment,—  is  throughout  a  combination  of  opposiles ; 
the  woman  depending  on  the  man,  —  whose  very 
strength,  however,  exists  only  by  her  weakness ;  the 
child  hanging  on  the  parent,  —  whose  power  were  no 
blessing,  were  it  not  compelled  to  stoop  in  gentleness; 
the  brother  protecting  the  sister — whose  affections 
would  have  but  half  their  wealth,  were  they  not 
brought  to  lean  on  him  with  trustful  pride;  and  even 
among  seeming  equals,  the  impetuous  quieted  by  the 
thoughtful,  and  the  timid  finding  shelter  with  the 
brave.  That  there  '  are  diversities  of  gifts '  is  the 
reason  why  there  'is  one  spirit;'  and  it  is  because 
one  is  reliable  for  knowledge,  and  another  for  resolve, 
and  a  third  for  the  graces  of  a  balanced  mind,  that  all 
are  held  in  the  bonds  of  a  pure  affection. 

The  same  principle  distinguishes  natural  Society 
from  artificial  Association.  The  former,  springing 
from  the  impulse  of  human  feeling,  brings  together 
elements  that  are  unlike ;  the  latter,  directed  to  spe- 
cific ends,  combines  the  like.  The  one,  completing 
defect  by  redundance,  and  compensating  redundance 
by  defect,  produces  a  real  and  living  unity;  the  other, 
multiplying  a  mere  fraction  of  life  by  itself,  retires 
further  and  further  from  any  integral  good,  and  results 
only  in  exaggerated  partiality.  I  do  not  suppose 
that  society  arises,  as  some  philosophers  represent, 
from  the  sense  of  individual  weakness,  and  the  desire 


LOOKING    UP,   AND    LIFTING    UP.  469 

for  consolidated  strength;  but,  it  must  be  owned,  the 
instinctive  propensities  of  mankind  create  nearly  the 
same  natural  classes,  as  if  it  were  so.  The  first  social 
group  would  contain  a  selection  of  the  elements  least 
able  to  subsist  apart,  and  most  compact  when  thrown 
into  a  system.  We  all  look  with  involuntary  admira- 
tion on  the  gifts  and  excellences  which  are  wanting 
in  ourselves;  and  so,  ignorance  is  drawn  to  know- 
ledge, and  artlessness  resorts  to  skill;  thought  is 
astonished  at  the  achievements  of  action,  and  action 
wonders  at  the  mysteries  of  thought;  the  irresolute 
trust  the  courageous,  and  all  find  a  refuge  in  the 
noble  and  the  just.  So  long  as  personal  qualities 
and  spontaneous  attractions  determine  the  sorting  of 
mankind,  they  will  dispose  themselves  in  classes,  con- 
taining each,  in  rugged  harmony,  the  elementary 
materials  of  our  humanity.  And  when  discord  arises, 
it  is  from  the  presence  of  too  many  similar  elements, 
which  have  no  respect  for  one  another,  no  mutual 
want,  no  reciprocal  helpfulness,  and  which  cannot 
therefore  co-exist  without  risk  of  dissension.  Say 
what  you  will,  nature  is  no  democrat,  but  filled 
throughout  with  ranks ;  and  it  is  only  in  proportion 
as  we  recede  from  the  natural  affections,  and  enter 
upon  the  life  of  isolated  self-will,  that  dreams  of 
social  equality  take  place  of  the  reality  of  social 
obedience. 

Now  the  assortments  of  an  old  civilization  follow 
a  law  precisely  the  reverse  of  that  which  we  have 
ascribed  to  the  Providential  rule.  It  unites  all  ele- 
ments that  are  like,  arid  separates  the  unlike.  In- 
stead of  throwing  men  into  harmonious  groups,  it 
analyzes  them  into  distinct  classes ;  conferring  upon 
each  sort  of  human  being,  a  kind  of  charter  of  incor- 
40 


470  BOOKING    UP,    AND    .LIFTING    UP. 

poration;  giving  them  something  of  a  collective  will, 
a  feeling  for  their  order  and  a  conscious  pursuit  of  its 
special  ends.  The  mutual  dependence  of  differently 
endowed  men  is  not  indeed  destroyed  or  even  less- 
ened; but  it  is  shifted  from  the  individual  to  the 
class.  Where,  before,  person  was  hopeful  to  person, 
nation  now  supplies  the  want  of  nation,  and  one 
mass  of  labor  fills  up  the  deficiency  of  another. 
This  makes  the  greatest  difference  in  the  whole  moral 
structure  of  human  life.  The  contact  of  the  dissimi- 
lar elements,  I  need  not  say,  is  much  less  close ;  vast 
circles,  embracing  collections  of  men,  hang  upon  one 
another ;  but  not  the  people  within  them,  taken  one 
by  one.  The  daily  life  of  each  is  passed  in  the 
presence,  not  of  his  unequals,  but  of  his  equals.  He 
lives  within  his  class;  he  mixes  with  those  who  have 
much  that  he  possesses,  and  little  that  he  wants;  and 
who  in  their  turn  want  little  that  he  can  give,  and 
much  of  which  he  is  empty.  He  finds  his  own  feel- 
ings repeated,  his  own  tastes  confirmed,  his  own 
judgments  defended,  his  own  type  of  wisdom  repro- 
duced; and  becoming  an  adept  in  the  characteristics 
of  his  order,  he  misses  the  perfection  of  his  nature. 
He  is  esteemed  in  proportion  as  he  exaggerates  the 
peculiarities  of  his  class;  and  he  ceases  to  be  its 
model  and  its  idol,  the  moment  he  seeks  to  infuse 
into  it  the  elements  of  some  foreign  wisdom,  and 
treats  with  respect  the  depository  of  some  opposing 
truth.  How  completely  this  association  by  sym- 
pathy has  taken  place  of  association  by  difference,  is 
plain  to  all  who  look  upon  the  world  with  open  eyes. 
Only  those  who  are  of  the  same  sect,  of  equal  rank, 
of  one  party,  of  kindred  pursuit,  of  pretty  equal 
knowledge,  and  concurrent  tastes,  are  found  often  in 


LOOKING    UP,    AND    LIFTING    UP.  471 

the  same  society.  In  education  the  graduated  dis- 
tribution of  nature  is  entirely  broken  up ;  all  the  boys 
collected  into  one  set,  all  the  girls  into  another;  and 
the  several  ages,  combined  in  the  system  of  Provi- 
dence, are  separated  by  the  arrangements  of  man. 
Everywhere  mechanism  and  economy  are  substi- 
tuting, over  our  world,  the  classifications  of  an  en- 
campment for  the  organism  of  a  home. 

I  am  far  from  supposing  that  all  this  is  entirely 
evil.  It  is  a  noble  distinction  of  civilized  above  bar- 
barous man,  that  he  can  bear  the  habitual  presence 
of  others  like  himself,  without  a  coercion  always  sus- 
pended over  his  passions ;  can  sympathize  with 
them,  and  join  in  hearty  fraternity  for  common 
ends  of  good.  To  live  among  our  equals  teaches, 
without  doubt,  the  two-fold  lesson  of  self-reliance 
and  self-restraint ;  it  enforces  a  respect  for  others' 
rights,  and  a  vigilant  guardianship  of  our  own ;  it 
substitutes  prudence  for  impulse ;  and  trains  the  sen- 
timents of  justice  and  veracity.  But,  while  it  in- 
vigorates the  energies  of  purpose,  it  is  apt  to  blight 
the  higher  graces  of  the  mind ;  and,  in  confirming  the 
moralities  of  the  will,  to  impair  the  devoutness  of  the 
affections.  A  man  always  among  his  equals  is  like 
the  school-boy  at  his  play ;  whose  eager  voice  and  dis- 
putatious claim,  and  bold  defiance  of  the  wrong,  and 
merciless  derision  of  the  feeble,  betray  that  self-will 
is  wide  awake,  and  pity  lulled  to  sleep.  But  see  the 
same  child  in  his  home ;  and  the  genial  laugh,  the 
deferential  look,  the  hand  of  generous  help,  the  air  of 
cheerful  trust,  show  how,  with  beings  above  and 
others  beneath  him,  he  can  forget  himself  in  gentle 
thoughts  and  quiet  reverence.  And  so  it  is  with  us 
all.  The  world  is  not  given  to  us  as  a  play-ground 


472  LOOKING    UP,    AND    LIFTING    UP. 

or  a  school  alone,  where  we  may  learn  to  fight  our 
way  upon  our  own  level,  and  leave  others  scope  for 
a  fair  race ;  but  as  a  domestic  system,  surrounding 
us  with  weaker  souls  for  our  hand  to  succor,  and 
stronger  ones  for  our  heart  to  serve.  If  the  one  set  of 
relations  are  needful  for  the  formation  of  manly 
qualities,  it  is  the  other  that  gives  occasion  to  the  di- 
vine. And  if  in  our  own  day  and  oar  own  class, 
the  moral  and  intellectual  elements  of  character  have 
become  completely  and  deplorably  ascendant  over  the 
religious ;  if,  in  our  honor  for  truth  and  justice  as 
realities,  we  have  got  to  think  all  piety  a  dream ;  if 
life,  in  becoming  a  vigorous  work,  has  ceased  to  be  a 
holy  worship ;  if  its  tasks  are  done,  and  its  mysteries 
forgotten,  and  in  being  occupied  by  our  Will  it  is 
emptied  of  our  God;  if,  in  the  better  rule  of  our 
finite  lot,  we  forget  to  serve,  its  Infinite  Disposer  ;  —  it 
is,  in  part,  because  we  live  too  exclusively  with  our 
equals ;  the  weak  herding  with  the  weak,  the  strong 
meeting  with  the  strong  ;  the  rich  surrounding  them- 
selves with  the  rich,  and  the  taught  fearing  the  more 
taught.  We  associate  with  those  who  think  our 
thought,  feel  our  feelings,  live  our  life  ;  we  read  the 
books  which  repeat  our  tastes,  justify  our  opinions, 
confirm  our  admirations ;  we  encourage  each  other  in 
laughing  at  the  excellence  to  which  we  are  blind,  and 
disbelieving  the  truth  to  which  we  have  never  opened 
our  reason,  and  shuffling  away  from  the  affections 
and  obligations  to  which  we  have  a  distaste.  And 
thus  our  existence  shrinks  into  a  miserable  egoism  ; 
the  theatre  on  which  we  stand  is  surrounded  by  mir- 
rors of  self-repetition  ;  and  we  render  it  impossible  to 
escape  the  monotonous  variety  of  the  poor  personal 
image. 


LOOKING    UP,   AND   LIFTING   UP.  473 

Now,  to  break  this  degrading  moral  illusion,  we 
have  only  to  study  and  adopt  the  grouping  of  the 
Christian  life;  which  corrects  the  classifications  of 
our  artificial  state  by  restoring  the  arrangements  of 
nature.  The  faith  of  Christ  throws  together  the  un- 
like ingredients  which  civilization  had  sifted  out  from 
one  another.  Every  true  church  reproduces  the  unity 
which  the  world  had  dissolved ;  and  for  the  preca- 
rious cohesion  of  similar  elements  substitutes  again 
the  attraction  of  dissimilar.  This  is  done  not  merely 
by  placing  us  all,  as  responsible  agents,  in  the  same 
venerable  relations,  and  so  strengthening  the  bonds  of 
earnest  brotherhood.  This  also  is  a  noble  and  human- 
izing thing.  But  Christianity  has  other  influences 
operating  to  the  same  end.  The  moment  a  man  be- 
comes a  disciple,  his  exclusive  self-reliance  vanishes : 
the  rigid  lines  of  his  mere  manly  posture  become 
softened;  he  trusts  another  than  himself;  he  loves  a 
better  spirit  than  his  own ;  and,  while  living  in  what 
is  human,  aspires  to  what  is  divine.  And  in  this 
new  opening  of  a  world  above  him,  a  fresh  light 
comes  down  upon  the  world  beneath  him  ;  the  infi- 
nite glory  of  the  heaven  reveals  the  infinite  sadness 
there  is  on  earth.  Standing  no  longer  on  his  own 
level,  as  if  that  were  ah1,  he  feels  himself  in  the  midst, 
between  a  higher  existence  to  which  he  would  attain, 
and  a  lower  to  which  he  would  give  help.  Aspiration 
and  pity  rush  into  his  heart  from  opposite  directions ; 
he  forgets  himself;  the  stiff  strong  footing  taken  by  his 
will  gives  way  ;  and  he  is  mellowed  into  the  attitudes 
of  looking  up  and  lifting  up.  These,  it  always  appears 
to  me,  are  the  two  characteristic  postures  of  the 
Christian  life ;  without  which  our  minds,  whatever 
their  opinions,  are  empty  of  all  religious  element,  and 
40* 


474  LOOKING    UP,    AND    LIFTING   UP. 

our  hearts,  though  still  humane,  lie  withered  in  athe- 
istic death.  If  there  were  no  ranks  of  souls  within 
our  view ;  if  all  were  upon  a  platform  of  republican 
equality ;  if  there  were  but  a  uniform  citizenship  of 
spirits,  and  no  royalty  of  goodness,  and  no  slavery  to 
sin ;  if  nothing  unutterably  great  subdued  us  to  al- 
legiance, and  nothing  sad  and  shameful  roused  us  to 
compassion;  —  I  believe  that  all  divine  truth  would 
remain  entirely  inaccessible  to  us,  and  our  existence 
would  be  reduced  to  that  of  intelligent  and  amiable 
animals;  the  noblest  chamber  of  the  soul,  the  vault 
of  its  hidden  worship,  remaining  locked,  the  corres- 
ponding region  of  the  universe,  the  hiding  place 
of  thunder,  —  the  secret  dwelling  of  the  Almighty 
—  would  be  closed  against  our  most  penetrating 
suspicions.  And  as  the  arrangements  by  which 
we  stand  —  members  of  a  graduated  series,  —  with 
beings  above  and  beings  below,  is  the  origin  of  faith ; 
so  is  the  practical  recognition  of  this  position  the 
great  means  of  feeding  the  perpetual  fountains  of  the 
Christian  life. 

A  great  German  poet  and  philosopher  was  fond  of 
defining  religion,  as  consisting  in  a  reverence  for 
inferior  beings.  The  definition  is  paradoxical ;  but 
though  it  does  not  express  the  essence  of  religion,  it 
assuredly  designates  one  of  its  effects.  True,  there 
could  be  no  reverence  for  lower  natures,  were  there 
not,  to  begin  with,  the  recognition  of  a  Supreme 
Mind ;  but  the  moment  that  recognition  exists,  we 
certainly  look  on  all  that  is  beneath  with  a  different 
eye.  It  becomes  an  object,  not  of  pity  and  protection 
only,  but  of  sacred  respect ;  and  our  sympathy,  which 
had  been  that  of  a  human  fellow-creature,  is  con- 
verted into  the  deferential  help  of  a  devout  worker  of 


LOOKING    UP,    AND    LIFTING    TIP.  475 

God's  will.    And  so  the  loving  service  of  the  weak  and 
wanting- is  an  essential  part  of  the  discipline  of  the 
Christian  life.     Some  habitual  association  with  the 
poor,  the  dependent,  the  sorrowful,  is  an  indispensable 
source  of  the  highest  elements  of  character.    If  we  are 
faithful  to  the  obligations  which   such  contact  with 
infirmity  must  bring  ;  if  we  gently  take  the  trembling 
hand  that  seeks  our  guidance,  and  spend  the  willing 
care,  and  exercise   the   needful  patience ;  —  why,  it 
makes  us  descend  into  healthful  depths  of  sorrowful 
affection  which  else  we  should  never  reach  ;  it  first 
teaches  us  what  it  is  to  wear  this  nature  of  ours,  and 
shows  us  that  we  have  been  men  and  have  not  known 
it.     It  strips  off  the  thick  bandages  of  self,  and  the 
grave-clothes  of  custom  ;  and  bids  us  awake  to  a  life 
which  first  reveals  to  us  the  death-like  insensibility 
from  which  we  are  emerging.     Yes  ;  and  even  if  we 
are  unfaithful  to  our  trust;  if  we  have  let  our  negli- 
gence have  fatal  way ;  if  sorrows  fall  on  some  poor 
dependent  charge,  from  which  it  was  our  broken  pur- 
pose to   shield   his   head;  —  still  it  is  good  that  we 
have  known  him,  and  that  his  presence  has  been  with 
us.     Had  we  hurt  a  superior,  we  should  have  ex- 
pected his  punishment ;  had  we  offended  an  equal,  we 
should  have  looked  for   his  displeasure ;   and,  these 
things  once  endured,  the  crisis  would  have  been  passed. 
But  to  have  injured  the  weak,  who  must  have  been 
dumb   before  us,  and   look   up   with  only  the  lines 
of  grief  which   we    have   traced;  —  this    strikes    an 
awful  anguish  into  our  hearts ;  a  cloud  of  divirje  Jus- 
tice broods  over  us,  and  we  expect  from  God  the  pun- 
ishment which  there  is  no  man  to  give.     The  rule  of 
heavenly  equity  gathers  closer  to  us  than  before ;  and 
we  that  had  neglected  mercy  are  brought  low  to  ask 


476  LOOKING    UP,    AND    LIFTING    UP. 

it.  Thus  it  is  that  the  weak,  the  child,  the  outcast, 
they  that  have  none  to  help  them,  raise  up  an  Infinite 
protector  on  their  side,  and  by  their  very  wretched- 
ness sustain  the  faith  of  Justice  ever  on  the  throne. 

The  other  half  of  Christian  discipline  is  of  a  less 
sad  and  more  inspiring  kind;  and  yet  scarcely  more 
welcome  to  the  vain  and  easy  and  self-complacent 
heart.     There  are  those  who  pass  through  life  with 
no  greater  care  than  to  keep  in   good  humor  with 
themselves;   who  dislike  the  spectacle  of  anything 
that  greatly  moves  or  visibly  reproaches  them;  who 
therefore  shun  those  that  know  more,  see  deeper,  aim 
higher,  than  themselves ;  who  are  ever  on  the  search, 
not  for  correction  of  their  errors,  but  for  confirmation 
of  their  prejudices ;  not  for  rebukes  to  their  littleness, 
but  for  praises  of  their  greatness;   and  who  hurry 
away  from  the  uneasiness  of  self-confession,  if  it  ever 
begins  to  flow,  amid  the  mists   of  self-justification. 
This  form  of  selfishness  may  not  be  utterly  inconsist- 
ent with  the  duty  on  which  I  have  insisted,  of  lifting 
up  the  beings  beneath  us ;  but  it  is  the  direct  con- 
trary of  the  other  portion  of  the  devout  life,  which 
consists  in  looking'  up  to  all  that  is  above  us.    It  is  the 
more  needful  to  guard  against  the  approach  of  such  a 
temper,  because  aspiration  is  more  easily  stifled  than 
compassion.      Its  faint  breathings   subside  through 
mere   forgetfulness ;  but  the  paroxysms  of  pity  can 
be  quelled  only  by  an  active  selfishness ;  and  admira- 
tion may  die  from  dearth  of  objects,  while  sympathy 
is  in  danger  rather  of  exhaustion  by  their  multitude. 
The   intercourse  with  suffering  which   sustains  the 
natural  spirit  of  mercy  is  so  near  our  doors,  as  hardly 
to  be  avoided  without  compunction ;  the  intercourse 
with  excellence  which  keeps  resolution  at  its  height 


LOOKING    UP,   AND    LIFTING    UP.  477 

is  a  privilege  so  rare  as  not  to  be  attained  without 
an  effort.  Yet  without  it  the  higher  elements  of  the 
Christian  life  must  fatally  decline.  The  soul  cannot 
permanently  feed  from  its  own  fuel  its  nobler  fires ;  it 
needs  at  least  some  stream  of  pure  air  from  aloft  to 
kindle  the  smouldering  thoughts,  and  make  the  clouds 
of  doubt  and  heaviness  burst  into  a  flame.  Only 
the  fewest  and  sublimest  natures,  —  bordering  almost 
on  the  perfectness  of  Christ,  —  can  remain  in  the  per- 
petual presence,  though  for  ends  of  genuine  mercy, 
of  infirm  or  depraved  humanity,  without  a  lowering 
of  the  moral  conceptions,  and  a  depression  of  hope 
and  faith.  And  by  a  natural  retribution,  through 
which  God  rebukes  every  partial  unfaithfulness,  and 
forbids  any  spiritual  grace  permanently  to  grow  with- 
out the  concurrent  culture  of  them  all,  the  tone  of 
pity  itself  must  gradually  sink  under  this  deteriora- 
tion ;  and  every  loss  from  the  enthusiasm  of  a  just 
devotion  brings  a  duller  shade  on  the  light  of  human 
love.  Hence,  the  anxiety  of  every  one,  in  proportion 
to  the  noble  earnestness  with  which  he  looks  on 
life,  to  hold  himself  in  unbroken  communion  with 
great  and  good  minds ;  never  to  depart  long  from  the 
touch  of  their  thought  and  the  witness  of  their  career; 
but  to  intermingle  some  divine  light  of  beauty  thence 
with  the  prosaic  story  of  his  days.  He  knows  that 
the  upper  springs  of  his  affections  must  soon  be  dry, 
unless  he  asks  the  clouds  to  nourish  them.  He  finds 
that  the  near  inspection  and  familiar  converse  of  wise 
and  holy  men  is  the  appointed  way  by  which  the 
Infinite  God  lifts  us  to  himself,  and  draws  us  upward 
with  perpetual  attraction.  They  are  the  mediators 
between  the  earth  and  heaven,  between  human  reali- 
ties and  divine  possibilities,  between  the  severities  of 


478  LOOKING    UP,    AND    LIFTING    UP. 

duty  and  the  peace  of  God;  compelling  us  to  own, 
how  glorious  when  done  are  things  most  difficult  to 
do ;  how  surely  the  dreams  of  conscience  may  become 
the  fixed  products  of  history;  and  how  from  the 
sighs  of  achievement  may  be  composed  the  hymn  of 
thanksgiving.  If,  therefore,  '  there  be  any  virtue,  if 
there  be  any  praise,'  whoever  would  complete  the 
circle  of  the  Christian  life  will  'think  on  these 
things;'  will  thrust  aside  the  worthless  swarm  of 
competitors  on  his  attention  ;  in  his  reading  will  ex- 
clusively retain,  in  his  living  associations  will  never 
wholly  lose,  his  close  communion  with  the  few  lofty 
and  faithful  spirits  that  glorify  our  world ;  and,  above 
all,  will  at  once  quench  and  feed  his  thirst  for  highest 
wisdom,  by  trustful  and  reverent  resort  to  Him  in 
whom  sanctity  and  sorrow,  the  divine  and  the  hu- 
man, mingled  in  ineffable  combination. 


XXXVIII. 

THE   CHRISTIAN  TIME-VIEW. 
1  CORINTHIANS  vn.  29,  31,  32. 

BUT    THIS    I   SAT,    BRETHREN,    THE    TIME   IS    SHORT:  — THE    FASHION 

OF   THIS   WORLD    PASSETH   AWAY. 1   WOULD   HATE   TOU   WITHOUT 

CAREFULNESS. 

PAUL  said  this  with  a  meaning  which  cannot  now 
be  restored  to  the  words,  and  which  makes  them  one 
of  the  grandest  expressions  of  the  true  Christian 
mind.  In  no  vague,  indeterminate  sense,  such  as 
ours,  did  he  declare  the  remainder  of  this  life  '  short;' 
and  we  should  much  misunderstand  his  feeling  here, 
if  we  took  it  for  a  commonplace  sigh  over  the  brief 
lodgment  permitted  to  man  on  earth.  It  was  not 
that  he  thought  the  natural  term  of  our  presence 
upon  this  scene  too  slight  for  earnest  pursuit,  and 
resolute  achievement;  not  that  he  preached  any 
sickly  and  selfish  indifferentism,  esteeming  our  days 
too  transient  for  love,  and  our  generation  too  perish- 
able for  faithful  service.  He  had  no  idea  that  the 
natural  term  would  be  completed,  or  the  generation 
run  itself  out.  Yet  he  felt  assured  that  he  and  his 
disciples  would  be  survivors  of  its  destruction;  and 
so,  urges  on  them  pursuits  of  immeasurable  ampli- 
tude, love  of  a  passionless  depth,  and  the  service  of 
none  but  eternal  obligations.  Instead  of  thinking,  as 


480  THE    CHRISTIAN    TIME-VIEW. 

any  man  might  do,  'Frail  tenants  are  we  of  this 
solid  globe,  —  phantoms  that  come  and  vanish;  leav-- 
ing   nothing   permanent   but   the   forms   of    human 
things,  which  remain  while  the  beings  change,  and  the 
scene  over  which  we  have  passed,  like  troops  of  suc- 
cessive apparitions;' — the  apostle  says,  '  My  friends, 
we  should  be  of  quiet  heart;  we  alone  are  immortal 
amid  perishable  things,  and  among  the  vain  shows 
of  creation,  remain  the  realities  of  God ;  this  world, 
though  it  seems  like  rooted  adamant,  is  melting  like 
a  painted  cloud  away;  the  forms  of  human  life,  the 
structure    of  communities,  the    instinctive   relations 
of  mankind,  which  alone  appear  unchangeable,  are 
alone  about  to  cease ;  and  our  individual  being,  of  all 
things  seeming  the  most  precarious,  is  alone  inca- 
pable of  death.'     Paul  actually  looked  around  him 
with   the    persuasion,   that   the   stable    products   of 
history   by   which   he   was    environed,  the  gigantic 
institutions,  the   proud  traditions,  the   accumulated 
wealth,  the  disciplined  force,  the  heartless  slavery, 
that  lay  within  the  grasp  of  Roman  power,  existed  by 
a  feebler  tenure  than  the  sickliest  infant's  life;    he 
looked   to    see   them   all,  and  the  mighty  arm  that 
held  them,  crumbled  into  sand  before  his  eyes.     A 
strange   and  wondrous  expectation  this,  seen   from 
our  point  of  view !     Afloat  upon  the  tide  of  human 
things,  in  that  poor  frail  skiff  of  a  Christian  Church 
which  he  took  to  be  an  ark  of  God,  how  could  he 
look  at  such  frowning  skies,  and  hope  to  ride  the 
storm   alone?      But,  in   truth   it   was   no   common 
tempest  that  he  thought  to  see;  rather  did  he  sail  on 
in  the  belief,  that  the  very  seas  of  time  beneath  him 
were  about  to  sink  and  flee  away;  bearing  with  them 
the  mighty  fleet  of  human  things  into  nothingness 


THE    CHRISTIAN    TIME-VIEW.  481 

and  night;  and  leaving  only  that  ark  suspended  in 
the  mid-heaven  of  God's  protection,  to  grow  into  a 
diviner  world.  Well  might  he  exhort  his  disciples  to 
disentangle  themselves  from  the  elements  about  to 
perish ;  to  disregard  the  perils,  and  forget  the  toils, 
and  transcend  the  anxieties,  that  beset  them.  Well 
might  he  remind  them  that  they  were  living  upon  a 
scale,  that  made  it  shameful  to  brood  on  these  things 
like  an  eager  and  wayward  child;  that  they  might 
live  in  obedience  to  their  largest  thoughts,  and  com- 
pute their  way  as  through  the  first  spaces  of  an  in- 
finite, perspective;  and  that,  to  minds  so  placed, 
nothing  was  so  fitting  as  a  serene  spirit  of  power; 
quiet,  not  from  the  extinction,  but  from  the  doubling 
of  emotion,  gathering  into  the  same  instant  the  feel- 
ings of  opposite  times,  and  making  'those  that  weep 
as  though  they  wept  not,  and  those  that  rejoice  as 
though  they  rejoiced  not,  and  those  that  used  this 
world  as  though  they  used  it  not ; '  and  all,  reposing 
'  without  carefulness '  on  the  will  of  God,  seeing 
how  soon  '  the  fashion  of  this  world  passeth  away.' 

This  was  the  apostle's  manner  of  regarding  life ; 
and  though  we  may  say  his  expectation  was  false, 
we  may  doubt  whether  any  man  since  has  had  one 
half  as  true.  It  is,  at  all  events,  unlike  the  error  of 
our  lower  spirits,  and  arises  from  a  mind,  not  too 
short-sighted,  but  too  far-seeing,  for  the  conditions 
of  our  mortal  state.  It  rightly  answers  the  great 
problem  between  true  and  false  religion,  —  I  should 
rather  say  between  religion  and  no  religion, — '  Which 
is  the  permanent  reality,  Life,  or  the  scenery  and 
receptacle  of  life;  the  Soul,  or  the  physical  Objects 
of  the  soul?'  Whoever  deeply  feels  that  one  of 
these  is  eternal,  must  see  the  other  to  be  evanescent ; 
41 


482  THE    CHRISTIAN    TIME-VIEW. 

for,  the  duration  of  either  is  simply  relative  to  the 
other,  which  is  its  only  measure ;  the  elongation  of 
the  one  is  to  us  the  abbreviation  of  the  other;  and  he 
who  takes  an  absolute  stand  of  faith  on  the  stability 
of  either,  beholds  the  other  passing  into  naught.     To 
dull  and  heavy  souls, —  nay,  to  the  lower  minds  of 
all  men,  —  nothing  seems  so  real  as  the  objects  of 
the  senses,  nothing  so  secure  as  the  material  forms  of 
nature,  to  which  from  the  first  every  human  life  has 
stood  related;   and  in  proportion  as  physical  science 
confirms  this  habit  of  thought,  in  proportion  as  mass- 
es and  weights  and   mechanism   engage  us,   or  the 
laws  of  organization,  or  the  outward  conditions   of 
social  life,  are  we  oppressed  by  the  solid  sameness  of 
these  things;  individual  existence  seems  the  sport  of 
a  dead  fatalism,  swallowed  up  by  the  hunger  of  an 
insatiable  necessity.     To  souls  like  that  of  Paul,  not 
passive  and  recipient,  but   vivid    and  productive, — 
souls  that  put  all  things  into  different  attitudes  by  a 
pure  act  of  meditation,  and  feel  how  the  universe 
approaches  or  recedes  before  the   changing   eye  of 
thought,  —  its  constancy,  nay  its  reality,  seems  purely 
relative;  it  lies  submissive  at  the  feet,  like  storm  and 
calm  before  the  eye  of  Christ;  the  primary  force  of 
God's  creation  appears  to  be  the   free  spontaneous 
soul ;  whose  existence  is  the  great  miracle  and  mys- 
tery of  Heaven ;  whose  tendency  is  ever  towards  a 
higher  life;   which  communes  through  the  screen  of 
outward  things  with  the  inner  mind  of  God,  feeling 
both  spirits  immortal,  and  only  the  veil  between  con- 
demned to  drop  away.     And  just  in  proportion  as 
the  worshipper  stands  up  before  Eternity  face  to  face, 
and   feels   it  there,  must  this   earth    and  its   time- 
relations  shrink  beneath  his  feet,  till  he  rests  upon  a 


THE    CHRISTIAN    TIME-VIEW.  483 

point  that  soon  will  vanish.  Paul,  wholly  absorbed  in 
the  immensity  of  existence,  could  by  no  means  meas- 
ure the  objects  of  existence  by  our  finite  rules ;  the 
depth  of  his  perspective  put  even  distant  things  into 
his  foreground ;  and  if  this  be  chronological  error,  it 
comes  in  with  the  shadow  of  religious  truth  ;  the  de- 
lusion is  scarce  distinguishable  from  the  inspiration  of 
the  prophet,  and  is  even  akin  to  the  perception  of  God. 
No  one  could  thus  look  the  earthly  into  nothing,  but 
by  filling  all  things  with  the  divine. 

It  was  not  then,  I  conceive,  the  historical  misappre- 
hension about  the  end  of  the  world,  that  led  to  the 
belief  of  human  immortality ;  it  was  the  intensity  of 
the  belief  in  immortality,  that  produced  the  idea  of 
the  approaching  end  of  the  world.  This  is  apparent 
in  a  way  by  which  you  may  always  distinguish  a 
primitive  from  a  derivative  doctrine ;  the  former  is 
everywhere  assumed,  and  appears  as  an  all-perva- 
ding and  unconscious  faith  ;  the  latter  is  frequently 
argued  and  expounded,  and  appears  as  an  avowed 
opinion.  The  combination  of  the  two,  however,  has 
had  important  effects  on  the  development  of  our  re- 
ligion ;  and  it  may  be  doubted  whether  without  it, 
Christendom  could  have  taken  to  heart  that  solemn 
sense  of  the  infinite  scale  of  human  life,  which  is  the 
great  characteristic  of  its  theory  of  existence.  Paul 
kept  a  whole  generation  of  the  church  in  awful  and 
breathless  suspense;  listening  for  the  approaching 
peal  of  doom,  till  earthly  sounds  fell  as  faint  unreali- 
1ies  upon  their  ear;  straining  their  vision  aloft,  as 
through  a  long  watch-night,  for  the  sign  of  the  Son 
of  Man  in  heaven  ;  till  their  footing  seemed  loosened 
beneath  them,  and  the  landscape  sank  into  the  dark 
away.  Thus  alone,  I  believe,  could  the  invisible 


484  THE    CHRISTIAN    TIME-VIEW. 

world  be  raised  into  the  great  reality  to  man.  The 
first  age  of  Christendom,  sequestered  from  all  else, 
and  spent  on  its  very  front,  obtained  a  divine  insight 
that  has  not  been  lost.  The  heavenly  breath  that 
swept  across  the  margin,  made  it  felt  how  the  heats 
of  the  present  should  be  cooled,  and  the  fever  of  the 
passions  purified.  Our  poor  minds  can  take  in  only 
one  great  conception  at  a  time,  and  must  be  left 
alone  with  it  for  a  full  lifetime,  if  it  is  to  be  incor- 
porated with  the  character,  and  ennoble  the  history, 
of  succeeding  ages.  Moreover  the  great  religious 
faiths  must  be  the  visible  basis  of  practical  life  to  one 
period,  ere  they  can  be  rooted  in  the  acceptance  of 
another;  and  had  not  the  early  Christians  watched 
their  hour  for  Christ,  their  fellow-disciples  ever  after 
would  have  fallen  asleep  in  the  fatigues  of  this 
world,  deaf  to  the  voice  of  its  divinest  sorrows,  and 
missing  the  angels  of  preternatural  strength.  The 
superstition  therefore  of  one  age  may  become  the 
truth  and  guidance  of  all  others. 

That  Christianity  did  really  give  an  infinite  enlarge- 
ment to  the  scale  of  human  life,  and  that  this  is  one 
of  its  great  features,  is  conscious  enough  on  compar- 
ing it  with  the  religions  it  supplanted.  It  was  not 
indeed  that  Pagan  societies  were  without  the  con- 
ception of  a  future ;  but  Christianity  first  got  it  cor- 
dially believed.  Even  the  meditative  philosophy  of 
Greece  can  present  no  clear  instances  of  hearty  and 
deep  conviction,  except  in  Plato  and  his  master ;  and 
whatever  we  may  think  of  the  rhetorical  leanings  of 
Cicero  in  the  same  direction,  the  practical  earnestness 
of  Rome  was  wholly  given  up,  for  want  of  higher 
thoughts,  to  material  interests  and  outward  magnifi- 
cence. The  faint  and  spectral  fancies  of  a  possible 


THE  CHBISTIAN  TIME-VIEW.  485 

future  that  floated  before  the  mind  of  the  people, 
scared  away  no  crime,  tranquillized  no  passion,  disen- 
chanted no  instant  pleasure.  They  lay  fevered  and 
restless  beneath  the  broad,  burning  orb  of  this  imme- 
diate life,  drunk  with  hot  indulgence,  and  asleep  to 
the  midnight  hemisphere  of  faith  open  to  the  vigils 
of  the  purer  soul.  Throughout  Christendom,  on  the 
other  hand,  this  boundless  night-scene  of  existence 
has  been  the  great  object  of  contemplation ;  has 
swallowed  up  the  day  ;  has  reduced  the  meridian 
glare  of  life  to  an  exaggerated  star-light,  truly  seen 
as  such  from  more  central  positions  where  the  appar- 
ent does  not  distort  the  real.  The  difference  between 
the  ancient  and  the  modern  world  is  this ;  that  in  the 
one  the  great  reality  of  being  was  now  ;  in  the  other, 
it  is  yet  to  come.  If  you  would  witness  a  scene  char- 
acteristic of  the  popular  life  of  old,  you  must  go  to  the 
amphitheatre  of  Rome,  mingle  with  its  eighty  thou- 
sand spectators,  and  watch  the  eager  faces  of  Sen- 
ators and  people ;  observe  how  the  masters  of  the 
world  spend  the  wealth  of  conquest,  and  indulge  the 
pride  of  power ;  see  every  wild  creature  that  God  has 
made  to  dwell  from  the  jungles  of  India  to  the  moun- 
tains of  Wales,  from  the  forests  of  Germany  to  the 
deserts  of  Nubia,  brought  hither  to  be  hunted  down  in 
artificial  groves  by  thousands  in  an  hour ;  behold  the 
captives  of  war,  noble  perhaps  and  wise  in  their  own 
land,  turned  loose  amid  yells  of  insult  more  terrible 
for  their  foreign  tongue,  to  contend  with  brutal  gladi- 
ators trained  to  make  death  the  favorite  amusement, 
and  present  the  most  solemn  of  individual  realities  as 
a  wholesale  public  sport ;  mark  the  light  look  with 
which  the  multitude,  by  uplifted  finger,  demands  that 

the  wounded  combatant  be  slain  before  their  eyes  ; 
41* 


486  THE    CHBISTIAN    TIHE-YIEW. 

notice  the  troop  of  Christian  martyrs  awaiting,  hand 
in  hand,  the  leap  from  the  tiger's  den  ;  and  when  the 
day's  spectacle  is  over,  and  the  blood  of  two  thousand 
victims  stains  the  ring,  follow  the   giddy   crowd  as 
it  streams  from  the  vomitories  into  the  street,  trace 
its    lazy  course  into    the    forum,  and   hear   it   there 
scrambling  for  the  bread  of  private  indolence  doled 
out  by  the  purse  of  public  corruption  ;  and  see  how 
it  suns  itself  to  sleep  in  the  open  ways,  or  crawls 
into  foul  dens,  till  morning  brings  the  hope  of  games 
and  merry  blood  again  ;  —  and  you  have  an  idea  of 
the  Imperial  people,  and  their  passionate  living  for 
the  moment,  which  the  gospel  found  in  occupation  of 
the  world.     And  if  you  would  fix  in  your  thought  an 
image  of  the  popular  mind  of  Christendom,  I  know 
not  that  you  could   do  better  than  go  at  sunrise  with 
the  throng  of  toiling  men  to  the  hill-side  where  Whit- 
field  or  Wesley  is  about  to  preach.     Hear  what  a 
great  heart  of  reality  in  that  hymn  that  swells  upon 
the  morning  air, —  a  prophet's  strain  upon  a  people's 
lips !     See  the  rugged    hands  of  labor  clasped  and 
trembling,  wrestling  with  the  Unseen  in  prayer!     Ob- 
serve the  uplifted  faces,  deep-lined  with  hardship  and 
with    guilt,  streaming    now  with    honest   tears,  and 
flushed    with    earnest   shame,   as    the    man    of   God 
awakes  the  life  within,  and  tells  of  him  that  bare  for 
us  the  stripe    and   the    cross,  and    offers  the   holiest 
spirit  to  the  humblest  lot,  and  tears  away  the  veil  of 
sense  from  the  glad  and  awful  gates  of  heaven  and 
hell.     Go  to  these   people's   homes,  and  observe  the 
decent  tastes,  the  sense  of  domestic  obligations,  the 
care  for  childhood,  the  desire  of  instruction,  the  neigh- 
borly   kindness,  the    conscientious    self-respect ;    and 
say,  whether  the  sacred  image  of  duty  does  not  live 


THE    CHRISTIAN    TIME-VIEW  487 

within  those  minds;  whether  holiness  has  not  taken 
the  place  of  pleasure  in  their  idea  of  life;  whether  for 
them  too  the  toils  of  nature  are  not  lightened  by  some 
eternal  hope,  and  their  burthen  carried  by  some  angel 
of  love,  and  the  strife  of  necessity  turned  into  the 
service  of  God.  The  present  tyrannizes  over  their 
character  no  more,  subdued  by  a  future  infinitely 
great ;  and  hardly  though  they  lie  upon  the  rock  of 
this  world,  they  can  live  the  life  of  faith;  and  while 
the  hand  plies  the  tool  of  earth,  keep  a  spirit  open  to 
the  skies. 

There  is  something  very  ennobling  to  human  char- 
acter in  the  possession  of  a  large  Time-view;  and  its 
effects  are  visible  in  many  cases  not  directly  religious. 
Next  to  having  a  noble  future  before  us,  is  it  well  to 
have  a  wide  and  worthy  past.  This  it  is  that  renders 
the  old  man  venerable.  His  actual  momentary  life  is 
often  poor  and  sad  enough ;  the  windows  of  sense 
and  soul  shut  on  the  light  and  stir  of  the  world  with- 
out, and  the  avenues  choked  up  through  which  the 
interests  and  passions  of  the  hour  should  vibrate  to 
his  heart.  But,  while  shaded  from  the  dazzle  of  the 
instant,  the  tranquil  light  of  half  a  century  is  spread 
beneath  his  eye.  Many  a  gaudy  bubble  he  has  seen 
rise,  and  glitter,  and  burst ;  many  a  modest  good  take 
secret  root  and  grow.  Every  game  of  hope  and  pas- 
sion he  has  seen  played  out,  and  for  every  passage 
presented  on  the  living  stage,  can  find  a  parallel 
scene  in  the  old  drama  whose  curtain  never  drops. 
The  heroes  and  the  wise  of  the  past  age,  ideal  to 
others,  were  real  to  him ;  his  familiars  are  among  the 
dead,  dear  yet  to  many  hearts;  and  as  he  explores 
again  that  silent  past,  and  climbs  once  more  its 
consecrated  heights,  and  loses  himself  in  its  sweet 


488  THE    CHKISTIAN    TIME-VIEW. 

valleys,  and  rebuilds  its  fallen  fragments,  he  feels 
something  of  an  historic  dignity,  which  sustains  the 
trembling  steps,  and  gives  courage  to  the  sorrowful 
decline.  And  so  is  it  too  with  family  recollections. 
To  have  had  forefathers  renowned  for  honorable 
deeds,  to  belong  by  nature  to  those  who  have  bravely 
borne  their  part  in  life  and  refreshed  the  world  with 
mighty  thought  and  healthy  admiration,  is  a  privi- 
lege which  it  were  mean  and  self-willed  to  despise. 
It  is  as  a  security  given  for  us  of  old,  which  it  were 
false-hearted  not  to  redeem ;  and  in  virtues  bred  of  a 
noble  stock,  mellowed  as  they  are  by  reverence,  there 
is  often  a  grace  and  ripeness,  wanting  to  self-made 
and  bran-new  excellence.  Of  like  value  to  a  people 
are  heroic  national  traditions^  giving  them  a  deter- 
minate character  to  sustain  among  the  tribes  of  men, 
making  them  familiar  with  images  of  great  and 
strenuous  life,  and  kindling  them  with  faith  in  glori- 
ous possibilities.  No  material  interests,  no  common 
welfare,  can  so  bind  a  community  together,  and 
make  it  strong  of  heart,  as  a  history  of  rights  main- 
tained, and  virtues  uncorrupted,  and  freedom  won ; 
and  one  legend  of  conscience  is  worth  more  to  a 
country  than  hidden  gold  and  fertile  plains.  It  is 
but  an  extension  of  the  same  influence  that  we  dis- 
cern in  the  Christian  theory  of  life;  only  that  it 
opens  out  our  time-view  alike  in  the  future  and  the 
past.  It  makes  both  our  lineage  and  our  destiny 
divine;  proclaims  us  Sons  of  God,  and  heirs.  No 
tie  can  so  fasten  on  us  the  feeling,  that  we  belong 
not  to  the  present,  and  degrade  our  nature  whenever 
we  live  for  the  passing  moment  only;  that  we  are 
not  our  owrj,  but  the  great  father,  God's.  Our  lot  is 
greater  than  ourselves,  and  gives  to  our  souls  a  worth 


THE    CHRISTIAN    TIME-VIEW.  489 

they  would  not  else  have  dared  to  claim.  Hence 
the  humbleness  there  always  is  in  Christian  dignity. 
The  immortal  lot  infinitely  transcends  our  poor  de- 
serts ;  how  we  are  to  grow  into  the  proportions  of  so 
high  a  life,  it  is  wonderful  to  think.  And  yet  though 
it  be  above  us  always, —  nay,  even  because  it  is 
above  us,  —  there  is  something  in  it  true  and  answer- 
ing to  our  nature  still;  so  that,  having  once  lived 
with  it,  we  are  only  half  ourselves  —  and  that  the 
meaner  half — without  it.  The  infinite  burthen  of 
duty  which  good  hearts  are  constrained  to  bear,  is 
tolerable  only  to  an  immortal  strength.  The  un- 
speakable imploring  homage  with  which  we  look  on 
truth  and  wisdom  and  greatness  in  other  souls,  is  but 
sorrow  and  servitude,  except  to  a  spirit  freed  with  an 
eternal  love.  The  Christian  hope  gives  peace  and 
power  by  restoring  the  broken  proportions  of  the 
mind ;  and  tranquillizes  the  restlessness  of  a  spirit 
unconsciously  '  cabined,  cribbed,  confined.'  It  is  this 
truthfulness  to  our  best  and  deepest  nature,  —  the 
power  we  receive  from  it,  the  quiet  we  find  in  it,  — 
that  gives  to  the  Christian  estimate  of  life  its  most 
irresistible  persuasion  upon  the  heart.  For  rny  own 
part,  I  confess  it  is  the  only  evidence  that  seems  to 
give  me  true,  serene,  absolute  faith;  and  when,  in 
lower  moods  of  thought,  I  am  driven  to  cast  about  for 
a  limited,  intellectual  ground  of  trust,  and  become  a 
disciple  according  to  argument,  I  sometimes  doubt 
whether  I  do  more  than  fancy  I  believe. 

With  what  temper  then  does  this  great  faith  send 
us  forth  to  our  immediate  work?     With  the  assur- 
ance that  the  true  life  is  not  yet;  that  nobler  forms, 
of   being  and    affection    are   in    reserve   for   faithful 
minds ;  that  the  present  derives  its  chief  interest  and 


490  THE    CHRISTIAN    TIME-VIEW. 

value,  not  from  itself,  but  from  its  relations.  To  live, 
in  short,  consists  not  in  enjoying  the  day  and  forget- 
ting in  the  night;  but  in  a  waking  conscience,  a  self- 
forgetful  heart,  an  ungrudging  hand,  a  thought  ever 
earnest  for  the  truth ;  in  a  perpetual  outlook  of  hope 
from  our  lower  point  upon  an  upper  and  infinite 
glory.  We  need  not  let  the  present  be  so  eclipsed 
by  the  future,  —  we  need  not  look  upon  its  scenes  or 
upon  ourselves  as  so  mean  beneath  that  ulterior  re- 
splendence,—  that  life  now  should  be  darkened  by 
the  contrast,  instead  of  cheered  by  the  connection. 
It  is  no  sad  lot  of  expiation  that  we  suffer,  no 
penance  that  our  years  on  earth  perform,  purifying 
by  tears  and  mortification,  a  natural  disqualification 
for  any  higher  state.  On  the  contrary,  the  germs  of 
the  immortal  growth  are  within  us  now,  and  will 
spring  up,  not  by  the  bruising  and  crushing  of  our 
nature,  but  by  its  glorious  opening  out.  We  are 
here  to  try  and  train  our  faculties  for  great  achieve- 
ments and  harmonious  residence  within  the  will  of 
God.  Nor  is  the  theatre  unworthy  of  our  best  en- 
deavors. Only  let  us  not,  in  action  or  in  suffering, 
sink  down  upon  the  present  moment,  as  if  that  were 
all.  Amid  the  strife  and  sorrow  that  await  us,  let  us 
remember,  that  the  ills  of  life  are  not  here  on  their 
own  account,  but  are  as  a  divine  challenge  and  god- 
like wrestling  in  the  night  with  our  too  reluctant 
wills ;  and  since,  thus  regarded,  they  are  truly  evil  no 
more,  let  us  embrace  the  conflict  manfully,  and  fear 
no  defeat  to  any  faithful  will.  When  all  is  well  with 
us  in.this  world,  let  us  not  forget  that  its  enjoyments 
also  are  not  here  on  their  own  account;  the  cup  is 
not  to  be  tossed  off  in  careless  draughts.  They  too 
stand  in  relation  to  the  affections  and  character  of 


THE    CHRISTIAN    TIME-VIEW.  491 

soul,  and  thence  derive  their  truest  worth ;  it  were  sin 
to  take  them  to  our  selfish  sensibilities  alone;  and 
they  must  warm  us  with  a  grateful  and  a  generous 
mind,  more  trustful  in  the  love  of  God,  more  prompt 
with  a  true  piety  for  man.  And  when  we  best  and 
most  strenuously  follow  the  obligations  of  our  career, 
we  can  permit  no  flutter  of  self-gratulation  to  dis- 
turb the  quiet  meekness  of  the  heart.  For  only  look 
up  on  that  which  we  dare  to  hope,  and  how  are  our 
mightiest  achievements  dwarfed.  All  insufficient  in 
themselves,  —  poor  spellings-out  of  the  mere  alphabet 
of  eternal  wisdom,  —  they  are  but  signs  of  willing 
pupilage,  —  the  upturned  look  of  a  disciple  sitting  at 
the  feet.  As  symbols  of  faith  and  service,  God  will 
be  graciously  pleased  to  accept  them  from  us ;  and 
discern  in  them  the  early  essays  of  a  soul  that  shall 
assume  at  length  dimensions  more  divine. 


XXXIX. 

THE  FAMILY  IN  HEAVEN  AND  EARTH. 

EPHESIANS  in.  14,  15. 

OUR   LORD   JESUS    CHRIST, OF  WHOM  THE  TTHOLE   FAMILY  IN  HEAVEN 

AND    EARTH    IS    NAMED. 

JESUS  was  never  so  much  one  with  his  disciples, 
as  when  he  was  no  longer  with  them;  they  were 
never  so  widely  severed  from  him,  as  when,  with 
unawakened  and  dim-discerning  heart,  they  lingered 
around  him,  with  eyes  so  holden  that  they  did  not 
know  him.  The  nearest  in  person  may  clearly  be 
the  furthest  in  soul ;  they  may  eat  at  the  same  table, 
and  morning  and  night  exchange  the  greeting  and 
the  parting  look,  yet  each  remain  outside  the  spirit  of 
the  other,  —  severed  even  by  an  impassable  chasm, 
to  which  the  earth's  diameter  would  be  less  than  an 
arm's  length.  But  where  the  inner  being,  rather  than 
the  mere  outer,  has  been  passed  together,  and  we 
have  found  in  some  fraternal  heart  the  appointed 
confessional  for  the  doubts,  and  strife,  and  sorrowful 
resolves  of  our  existence,  no  amount  of  land  or 
water  can  break  the  mutual  affiliation ;  the  recipro- 
cation of  pity  and  of  trust,  the  placid  memories,  the 
joint. courage  to  bear  well  the  solemn  weight  of  life, 
which  enrich  a  present  love,  may  consecrate  the 
absent  too.  Nay,  distance  may  even  set  a  human 
life  in  truer  and  more  affectionate  aspect  before  us, 


THE    FAMILY    IN    HEAVEN    AND    EARTH.  493 

by  stripping  off  its  trivialities,  and  bringing  out  its 
essential  features,  and  urging  our  thought  to  conceive 
it  as  a  whole  from  its  beginning  to  its  close ;  and  in 
the  want  of  any  lighter  union,  we  fold  ourselves  in 
the  embrace  of  the  same  divine  laws,  and  compas- 
sion for  the  same  mortal  lot. 

With  the  boldness  of  a  true  and  inspired  nature, 
the  apostle  Paul  gives  an  immeasurable  extension  to 
this  thought;  and  speaks  with  incidental  ease,  of 
1  one  family,''  distributed  between  heaven  and  earth. 
There  is,  it  seems,  a  domesticity  that  cannot  be 
absorded  by  the  interval  between  two  spheres  of 
being; — a  love  that  cannot  be  lost  amid  the  im- 
mensity, but  finds  the  surest  track  across  the  void;  — 
a  home-affinity  that  penetrates  the  skies,  and  enters 
as  the  morning  or  the  evening  guest.  And  it  is  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  who  has  effected  this ;  —  has  entered 
under  the  same  household  name,  and  formed  into 
the  same  class,  the  dwellers  above  and  those  beneath. 
Spirits  there,  and  spirits  here,  are  gathered  by  him 
into  one  group;  and  where  before  was  saddest  exile, 
he  has  made  a  blest  fraternity.  Let  us  observe  in 
what  instances,  and  by  what  means,  the  spirit  of 
Christ  draws  into  one  circle  the  members  of  some 
human  society,  separated  else  by  hopeless  distance. 

Members  of  the  same  home  cannot  dwell  together, 
without  either  the  memory  or  the  expectation  of 
some  mutual  and  mortal  farewell.  Families  are  for- 
ever forming,  forever  breaking  up ;  and  every  stroke 
of  the  pendulum  carries  the  parting  agony  through 
fifty  homes.  There  is  no  one  of  mature  affections 
from  whose  arms  some  blessing  of  the  heart, — 
parent,  sister,  child,  —  has  not  died  away,  and  slip- 
ped, not  as  once  into  extinction,  but  (chief  thanks  to 
42 


494  THE    FAMILY    IN    HEAVEN    AND    EARTH. 

Messiah's  name)  into  eternity.  All  we  who  dwell  in 
this  visible  scene  can  think  of  kindred  souls  that 
have  vanished  from  us  into  the  invisible.  These,  in 
the  first  place,  does  Jesus  keep  dwelling  near  our 
hearts;  making  still  one  family  of  those  in  heaven 
and  those  on  earth. 

This  he  would  do,  if  by  no  other  means,  by  the 
prospect  he  has  opened,  of  actual  restoration.  Hope- 
less grief  for  the  dead,  in  being  passionate,  is  tempted 
to  be  faithless  too ;  for,  it  has  no  remedy  but  in 
suffering  remembrance  to  fade  away,  and  employing 
the  gaudy  colors  of  the  present  to  paint  over  the 
secred  shadows  of  the  past.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
most  distant  promise  of  a  renewed  embrace  is  suffi- 
cient to  keep  alive  an  unforgetful  love.  Come  where 
and  when  it  may,  after  years  or  ages,  in  the  nearest 
or  furthest  regions  of  God's  universe,  it  passes  across 
our  minds  the  vision  of  re-union ;  it  opens  a  niche  in 
the  crypt  of  the  affections,  where  the  images  of  house- 
hold memory  may  stand,  and  gaze  with  placid  look 
at  the  homage  of  our  sorrow,  till  they  light  up  again 
with  life,  and  fall  into  our  arms  once  more.  It 
matters  little  at  what  point  in  the  perspective  of  the 
future  the  separation  enforced  by  death  is  thought  to 
cease.  Faith  and  Love  are  careless  time-keepers; 
they  have  a  wide  and  liberal  eye  for  distance  and 
duration ;  and  while  they  can  whisper  to  each  other 
the  words  '  Meet  again,'  they  can  watch  and  toil  with 
wondrous  patience,  —  with  spirit  fresh  and  true,  and, 
amid  its  most  grievous  loneliness,  unbereft  of  one 
good  sympathy.  And  since  the  grave  can  bury  no 
affections  now,  but  only  the  mortal  and  familiar 
shape  of  their  object;  death  has  changed  its  whole 
aspect  and  relation  to  us ;  and  we  may  regard  it,  not 


THE    FAMILY    IN    HEAVEN    AND    EARTH.  495 

with  passionate  hate,  but  with  quiet  reverence.  It  is 
a  divine  message  from  above,  not  an  invasion  from 
the  abyss  beneath;  not  the  fiendish  hand  of  darkness 
thrust  up  to  clutch  our  gladness  enviously  away,  but 
a  rainbow  gleam  that  descends  through  tears,  with- 
out which  we  should  not  know  the  various  beauties 
that  are  woven  into  the  pure  light  of  life.  Once  let 
the  Christian  promise  be  taken  to  the  heart;  and  as 
we  walk  through  the  solemn  forest  of  our  existence, 
every  leaf  of  love  that  falls,  while  it  proclaims  the 
winter  near,  lets  in  another  patch  of  God's  sunshine, 
to  paint  the  glade  beneath  our  feet,  and  give  '  a  glory 
to  the  grass.'  Tell  me  that  I  shall  stand  face  to  face 
with  the  sainted  dead;  and,  whenever  it  may  be,  shall 
I  not  desire  to  be  ready,  and  to  meet  them  with  clear 
eye  and  spirit  unabashed  ?  Shall  I  not  feel,  that  to 
forget  them  were  the  mark  of  a  nature  base  and 
infidel?  —  that  under  whatever  pleasant  shelter  I 
may  rest,  and  over  whatever  wastes  I  may  wander 
as  a  wayfarer  in  life,  I  must  bear  their  image  next 
my  heart;  —  like  the  exile  of  old,  flying  with  his 
household  gods  hidden  in  his  mantle's  secret  folds? 
That  the  Gospel  leaves  undetermined  the  period  and 
place  of  restoration ;  —  that  we  call  it  '  hereafter,'  and 
know  not  when  it  is;  that  we  call  it  'heaven,'  and 
know  not  where  it  is;  —  detracts  nothing  from  its 
power  to  unite  into  one  family  the  living  and  the 
departed.  It  is  the  office  of  pure  religious  medita- 
tion to  thin  away  the  partitions  of  time  till  they 
vanish,  and  cast  a  zone  around  space,  and  enclose  it 
all  within  the  mind;  to  feel  that  whatever  is  certain 
must  be  soon,  and  whatever  is  real  must  be  near  at 
hand.  And  hence,  it  is  the  characteristic  of  Christi- 
anity to  be  indifferent  as  to  the  time  and  locality  of 


496  THE    FAMILY    IN    HEAYEN    AND   EARTH. 

the  events  in  which  it  excites  our  faith.  Content 
with  scattering  great  and  transforming  ideas,  it  allows 
every  kind  of  misplacement  in  these  accidental  rela- 
tions ;  for,  if  true  portions  of  the  invisible  are  given  to 
our  belief,  what  matters  the  disposition  into  which 
our  thoughts  may  throw  them?  Early  or  late,  near 
or  far,  are  alike  in  the  eye  of  God,  and  may  well  be 
left  open  to  mutable  interpretation  from  the  wants 
and  affections  of  men.  Jesus  himself  spake  much, 
before  his  crucifixion,  of  his  re-union  with  his  dis- 
ciples. It  was  his  favorite  topic  throughout  that 
parting  night;  —  the  subject,  now  of  promise,  now 
of  prayer;  —  the  vision  from  which  in  that  hour  of 
anguish,  he  could  never,  for  many  moments,  bear  to 
part.  He  leaves  the  impression  that  it  would  be 
very  speedy ;  and  so  thought  the  apostles  ever  after. 
And  as  to  place,  his  expressions  fluctuate  somewhat 
between  here  and  there;  though  his  hearers  thence- 
forth looked,  and  looked  in  vain,  for  him  to  come 
back  to  be  with  them.  But  of  what  concern  was 
this?  For,  where  they  not  ready  to  meet  him,  be 
it  where  it  might?  Did  not  that  hope  keep  alive 
within  their  hearts  the  divine  and  gracious  image  of 
their  Lord,  and,  at  the  end  of  forty  years  of  various 
toil,  still  evoke  it,  beaming  and  breathing  as  though 
it  were  of  yesterday?  Worlds  above,  and  worlds 
below;  —  mansions  are  they  all  of  the  great  Father's 
house;  and  the  disciples'  greeting  would  be  equally 
blessed,  whether  the  immortal  Galilean  descended  to 
the  embrace  on  this  vestibule  of  finite  things;  or 
summoned  them  rather  across  its  thresholds  into  the 
Presence-chamber  of  the  Infinite.  And  no  less  in- 
different to  our  affections  are  the  localities  beyond 
the  grave.  Having  faith  that  the  lost  will  assuredly 


THE    FAMILY    IN    HEAVEN    AND    EARTH.  497 

be  found,  our  souls  detain  them  lovingly  in  the  do- 
mestic circle  still,  and  own  one  family  in  heaven  and 
on  earth.  We  may  cease  to  ask,  in  which  of  the 
provinces  of  God  may  be  the  city  of  the  dead  ;  a 
guide  will  be  sent,  when  we  are  called  to  go. 

Such  and  so  much  encouragement  would  Chris- 
tianity give  to  the  faithful  conservation  of  all  true 
affections,  if  it  only  assured  us  of  some  distant  and 
undefinable  restoration.  But  it  appears  to  me  to  as- 
sure us  of  much  more  than  this;  to  discountenance 
the  idea  of  any  even  the  most  temporary,  extinction 
of  life  in  the  grave  ;  and  to  sanction  our  faith  in  the 
absolute  immortality  of  the  mind.  Rightly  under- 
stood, it  teaches  not  only  that  the  departed  will  live, 
but  that  they  do  live,  and  indeed  have  never  died,  but 
simply  vanished  and  passed  away.  It  opens  to  our 
view  the  diviner  sphere  of  Christ's  ascension,  wherever 
it  may  be,  not  as  a  celestial  solitude,  where  he  spends 
the  centuries  alone;  but  as  the  ever-peopling  home  of 
men  and  nations,  where  predecessors  waited  to  give 
him  welcome,  and  disciples  go  to  call  him  blessed. 
It  is  a  great  thing,  thus  totally  to  abolish  the  idea  of 
any  annihilation,  however  momentary,  in  death,  and 
to  reduce  it  to  simple  separation.  For,  it  is  a  perilous 
and  even  fatal  concession  to  the  power  of  the  grave, 
to  admit  that  it  holds  anything  in  non-existence, 
and  absolutely  cancels  souls ;  swallowing  up  every 
trace  of  their  identity,  and  necessitating  the  creation 
of  another,  though  corresponding,  series.  Once  let 
an  object  of  deep  love  drop  into  that  abyss  and  sink 
in  its  privative  darkness,  and  how  shall  I  recover  it 
again?  Faith  stands  trembling  on  the  awful  brink, 
and  with  vain  cries  and  broken  supplications  owns 

herself  unequal  to  the  task ;  for  between  being-  and  no 

42* 


498  THE    FAMILY    IN    HEAVEN    AND   EAETH. 

being,  who  can  fathom  the  infinite  depth?  The  very 
creature  that  has  really  fallen  through  it,  scarcely  can 
Omnipotence  bring  back ;  though  it  produce  another 
like  in  every  feature,  giving  us  the  phantasm  and  not 
the  essence.  But  neither  to  God's  power  nor  to  our 
faith,  does  death  present  any  serious  perplexity,  if  it 
be  only  the  migration  of  a  spirit  that  does  not  cease 
to  live.  Thus  regarded,  it  interposes  nothing  but 
physical  distance  between  us  and  the  objects  of  our 
affectionate  remembrance.  While  we  poor  wayfarers 
still  toil,  with  hot  and  bleeding  feet,  along  the  high- 
way and  the  dust  of  life,  our  companions  have  but 
mounted  the  divergent  path,  to  explore  the  more 
sacred  streams,  and  visit  the  diviner  vales,  and 
wander  amid  the  everlasting  Alps,  of  God's  upper 
province  of  creation.  The  memorial  which  our  hand 
affectionately  raised  when  they  departed,  is  no  monu- 
ment to  tell  what  once  had  been  and  is  no  more  ;  it 
is  no  symbol  of  hopeless  loss  ;  but  the  landmark  from 
which  we  measure  off  the  miles  of  our  solitary  way, 
and  reckon  the  definite  though  unknown,  remnant  of 
our  pilgrimage ;  and  as  the  retrospect  is  lengthened 
out,  the  prospective  loneliness  is  shortening  to  its 
close.  And  so  we  keep  up  the  courage  of  our  hearts, 
and  refresh  ourselves  with  the  memories  of  love,  and 
travel  forward  in  the  ways  of  duty  with  less  weary 
step,  feeling  ever  for  the  hand  of  God,  and  listening 
for  the  domestic  voices  of  the  immortals  whose  happy 
welcome  waits  us.  Death,  in  short,  under  the  Chris- 
tian aspect,  is  but  God's  method  of  colonization ; 
the  transition  from  this  mother-country  of  our  race 
to  the  fairer  and  newer  world  of  our  emigration. 
What  though  no  other  passage  thither  is  permitted 
to  all  the  living,  and  by  neither  eye  nor  ear  we  can 


THE  FAMILY  IN  HEAVEN  AND  EARTH.      499 

discover  any  trace  of  that  unknown  receptacle  of 
vivid  and  more  glorious  life  ?  So  might  the  dwellers 
in  any  other  sphere  make  complaint  respecting  our 
poor  world.  Intensely  as  it  burns  with  life,  dizzy 
as  our  thought  becomes  with  the  din  of  its  eager 
passions,  and  the  cries  of  its  many  woes,  yet  from 
the  nearest  station  that  God's  universe  affords,  —  nay, 
at  a  few  miles  beyond  its  own  confines,  —  all  its 
stormy  force,  its  crowded  cities,  the  breathless  hurry 
and  ferment  of  its  nations,  —  the  whole  apparition 
and  chorus  of  humanity,  is  still  and  motionless  as 
death ;  gathered  all  and  lost  within  the  circum- 
ference of  a  dark  or  illumined  disk.  And  silent  as 
those  midnight  heavens  appear,  well  may  there  be, 
among  their  points  of  light,  some  one  that  thrills 
with  the  glow  of  our  lost  and  immortal  generations  ; 
busy  with  the  fleet  movements,  and  happy  energies, 
of  existence  more  vivid  than  our  own ;  where  as  we 
approach,  we  might  catch  the  awful  voices  of  the 
mighty  dead,  and  the  sweeter  tones,  lately  heard  in 
the  last  pain  and  sorrow,  of  our  own  departed  ones. 

But  it  is  not  merely  the  members  of  the  same 
literal  home  that  Christ  unites  in  one,  whether  in 
earth  or  heaven.  He  makes  the  good  of  every  age 
into  a  glorious  family  of  the  children  of  God ;  and 
inspires  them  with  a  fellow-feeling,  whatever  the  de- 
partment of  service  which  they  fill.  Discipleship  to 
Christ  is  not  like  the  partisanship  of  the  schools, — 
an  exclusive  devotion  to  partial  truth,  an  exaggera- 
tion of  some  single  phase  of  human  life.  Keeping 
us  ever  in  the  mental  presence  of  the  divinest  wis- 
dom and  in  veneration  of  a  perfect  goodness,  it 
accustoms  us  to  the  aspect  of  every  grace  that  can 
adorn  and  consecrate  our  nature ;  trains  our  percep- 


500  THE    FAMILY    IN    HEAVEN    AND    EAKTH. 

tions  instantly  to  recognize  its  influence  or  to  feel  its 
want.  It  looks  with  an  eye  of  full  and  clear  affection 
over  the  wide  circle  of  human  excellence.  Had  we 
not  been  the  followers  of  One,  whose  thoughts  were 
often  deep  and  mystic,  showing  how  simplicity 
touches  upon  wonder,  and  wonder  elevates  sim- 
plicity ;  we  might  have  overlooked  the  high  problems 
of  our  life,  and  held  in  light  esteem  the  souls  agitated 
by  their  grandeur,  perhaps  lost  in  their  profundity. 
Had  we  not  sat  at  the  feet  of  One,  before  whose 
gentle  tones  and  patient  looks  the  shrinking  child 
and  repentant  woman  might  feel  it  a  safe  and  heal- 
ing thing  to  stand,  we  might  have  despised  that  faith 
of  love  which  in  being  feminine,  does  not  cease  to 
be  manly,  and  have  allowed  no  recess  of  honor  in 
our  hearts  to  the  apostles  of  meekness  and  mercy. 
Had  we  not  heard  from  a  Master's  lips,  the  blight- 
ing severities  before  which  Pharisees  and  hypocrites 
flinched  and  stood  aghast,  we  might  have  softened 
unworthily  the  austere  claims  of  truth  and  justice, 
have  lost  the  healthy  horror  at  sin,  and  refused  our 
thanksgiving  to  the  patriots  and  prophets,  whose 
flashing  zeal  has  purified  the  atmosphere  of  this 
world.  And  were  it  not  for  the  words  so  infinitely 
graceful,  and  prayers  of  deepest  aspiration,  that  fell 
from  Messiah's  lips,  the  very  soul  of  Christendom 
would  have  been  steeped  in  colors  far  less  fair ; 
we  might  never  have  felt  how  soon  the  kindred 
fountains  of  sanctity  and  beauty  blend  together; 
and  have  denied  to  the  poet,  as  the  priest  of  nature, 
his  fit  alliance  with  the  priest  of  faith.  But  thrown 
as  we  are  into  reverence  for  no  disproportioned  and 
unfinished  soul,  we  cannot  contract  a  catholic  sym- 
pathy for  every  noble  form  assumed  by  our  human- 


THE  FAMILY  IN  HEAVEN  AND  EARTH.      501 

ity.  Philosophy  and  art,  the  statesman  and  the  bard, 
the  reformer  and  the  saint,  all  take  their  place  before 
us  in  the  Providential  sphere,  and  in  proportion  as 
they  are  faithful  to  their  trust,  draw  from  us  an  admir- 
ing recognition.  We  see  in  them  selections  from  the 
exhaustless  inspiration  of  the  infinite  wisdom  ;  streaks 
of  divine  illumination,  rushing  in  through  the  cloud- 
openings  of  our  world.  No  genuine  disciple  can  be 
sceptical  as  to  the  existence,  or  fastidious  as  to  the 
acknowledgment,  of  any  true  worthiness.  We  owe 
it  largely  to  the  author  of  our  faith,  that  we  cannot 
encounter  the  great  and  good  in  the  generations  of 
the  past,  without  affectionate  curiosity,  and  even 
strong  friendship.  Christ,  himself  the  discerner  of  the 
Samaritan's  goodness  and  the  alien's  faith,  has  called 
the  noble  dead  of  history  to  a  better  life  than  they 
had  before,  even  in  this  world;  their  memory  is 
dearer ;  their  example  more  productive ;  their  spirit 
more  profoundly  understood.  Thus  there  is  a]frater- 
nity  formed  that  disowns  the  restrictions  of  place  and 
time ;  a  Church  of  Christ  that  passes  the  bounds  of 
Christendom ;  and  though  in  the  general  chorus  of 
great  souls,  disciples  only  can  well  apprehend  the 
theme  and  put  in  the  words,  yet  the  glorious  voices 
of  Socrates  and  Plato,  of  Alcseus  and  Pindar,  of  Aris- 
tides  and  Scipio,  of  Antoninus  and  Boethius,  richly 
mingle  as  preluding  or  supporting  instruments,  filling 
the  melody,  though  scarce  interpreting  the  thought. 
Nor  is  this  brotherhood  confined  even  by  historic 
bounds  ;  it  spreads  beyond  this  sphere  and  makes  one 
family  in  heaven  and  earth.  The  very  faith  that  the 
honored  men  of  old  still  live,  and  carry  on  elsewhere 
the  appointed  work  of  faithful  minds,  unspeakably 
deepens  our  interest  in  them ;  forbids  us  to  sigh 


502  THE    FAMILY    IN    HEAVEN    AND    EARTH. 

after  them  as  irrecoverable  images  of  the  past ;  enrolls 
them  among  our  contemporaries  ;  and  from  the  lights 
of  memory  transfers  them  to  the  glories  of  hope.  If 
Pascal's  '  thoughts '  are  not  half  published  yet,  but 
are  pondering  for  the  secrets  of  sublimer  themes;  if 
Shakspeare's  genial  eye  is  withdrawn  from  the  stage  of 
life  only  that  it  may  read  the  drama  of  the  universe ;  if 
Paul,  having  testified  for  what  a  Christ  he  lived,  shall 
yet  tell  us  for  what  a  gain  he  died  ;  if  Isaiah's  harp  is 
not  really  silent,  but  may  fill  us  soon  with  the  glow 
of  a  diviner  fire; — with  what  solemn  heart,  what 
reverential  hand,  shall  we  open  the  temporary  page 
by  which,  meanwhile,  they  speak  with  us  from  the 
past!  Such  hope  tends  to  give  us  a  prompt  and 
large  congeniality  with  them  ;  to  cherish  the  health- 
ful affections  which  are  domestic  in  every  place  and 
obsolete  in  no  time ;  to  prepare  us  for  entering  any 
new  scene,  and  joining  any  new  society  where  good- 
ness, truth  and  beauty  dwell. 

Even  this  wide  friendship  need  not  entirely  close 
the  circle  of  our  fraternity.  Beyond  the  company  of 
the  great  and  good,  a  vast  and  various  crowd  is 
scattered  round  ;  no  line  must  be  drawn  which  they 
are  forbid  to  pass ;  some  span  of  sympathy  must 
embrace  them  too.  No  proud  mysteries,  no  secret 
initiation,  guard  the  entrance  to  the  Christian  brother- 
hood; even  wandering  guilt  must  be  sought  for  and 
brought  home;  and  penitence  that  sits  upon  the 
steps  must  be  asked  to  come  within  the  door.  Christ 
will  not  remain  at  the  head  of  the  'whole  family,'  if 
its  forlorn  and  outcast  members  are  simply  put  away 
in  selfish  shame,  and  no  gentle  care  is  spent  to 
smooth  the  pathway  of  return.  He  gives  to  some  a 
present  joy  in  one  another ;  he  denies  to  none  a  hope 


THE    FAMILY    IN    HEAYEN    AND    EARTH.  503 

for  all.  The  alliance  of  our  hearts  is  itself  founded 
on  the  kindred  in  our  being;  and  is  but  the  actual 
result  of  affections  not  impossible  to  any.  The 
affinities  of  nature  lie  deeper  than  the  sympathies  of 
taste;  and  should  be  accepted  as  guarantees  for  the 
equal  tenderness  of  God,  amid  the  alienations  of  our 
foolish  passions.  And  whoever  will  take  to  heart, 
how  the  same  human  burthen  is  laid  on  all,  and  the 
divine  relief  so  nobly  used  by  some  is  for  awhile  so 
sadly  missed  by  more ;  how  much  resemblance  lurks 
under  every  difference  between  man  and  man ;  how 
small  a  space  may  often  separate  the  decline  into 
grievous  failure,  and  the  ascent  into  glorious  success ; 
must  surely  feel  the  yearnings  of  a  fraternal  heart 
towards  all  who  have  borne  the  earthly  mission;  must 
look  on  the  apparition  and  disappearance  of  genera- 
tion after  generation  on  this  scene  with  an  almost 
domestic  regret  and  household  pity  for  his  kind;  con- 
soled and  elevated  by  the  trust,  that  men  and  nations 
wTho  have  performed  the  parts  of  shame  and  sorrow 
here,  are  trained  to  nobler  and  more  natural  offices 
elsewhere. 


XL. 

THE    SINGLE  AND  THE    EVIL    EYE. 
MATTHEW  vi.  22,  23. 

THE  LIGHT  OF  THE  BODY  IS  THE  EYE;  IF  THEREFORE  THINE  EYE 
BE  SINGLE,  THY  WHOLE  BODY  SHALL  BE  FULL  OF  LIGHT  ;  BUT  IF 
THINE  EYE  BE  EVIL,  THY  WHOLE  BODY  SHALL  BE  FULL  OF  DARK- 
NESS. IF  THEREFORE  THE  LIGHT  THAT  IS  IN  THEE  BE  DARKNESS. 
HOW  GREAT  IS  THAT  DARKNESS  ! 

GREAT,  indeed !  because  it  not  only  hides  realities, 
but  produces  all  kinds  of  deceptive  unrealities ;  to  the 
blinding  character  of  all  darkness,  adding  the  creative 
activity  of  light;  suppressing  the  clear  outline  and 
benign  face  of  things,  and  throwing  up  instead  their 
twisted  and  malignant  shadows.  This  is  the  differ- 
ence, so  awfully  indicated  by  the  greatest  of  Seers  in 
the  words  just  cited,  between  the  evil  eye  and  no  eye 
at  all.  The  latter  only  misses  what  there  is ;  the 
former  surrounds  itself  by  what  is  not.  The  one  is 
an  innocent  privation,  that  makes  no  pretence  to 
knowledge  of  the  light;  the  other  is  a  guilty  delusion, 
proud  of  its  powers  of  vision,  and  applying  its  blind 
organ  to  every  telescope  with  an  air  of  superior 
illumination.  The  one  is  the  eye  simply  closed  in 
sleep ;  the  other,  staring  with  nightmare  and  burning 
with  dreams;  whose  train  the  gloom  of  midnight 
does  not '  relieve,  and  whose  trooping  images  the 


THE    SINGLE   AND   THE    EVIL    EYE.  505 

dawning  light  does  not  disperse.  He  whose  very 
light  has  become  darkness,  treats  the  privative  as 
positive  and  the  positive  as  privative ;  he  sees  the 
single,  double,  and  the  double,  single ;  with  him 
nothing  is  infinite,  and  the  infinite  is  nothing.  The 
great  prism  of  truth  is  painted  backward,  and  the 
rainbow  of  promised  good  is  upside  down ;  and  while 
he  cannot  espy  the  angel  standing  in  the  sun,  he  can 
read  the  smallest  print  by  the  pit-lights  of  Tophet,  that 
threaten  to  blind  the  spirits,  and  smoke  out  the  stars. 
To  the  evil  eye  the  universe  is  not  simply  hidden  but 
reversed. 

This  will  not  appear  strange  to  any  one  who  con- 
siders that  two  things  are  requisite  for  perception  of 
any  sort ;  viz.,  an  object^  and  an  instrument,  of  per- 
ception ;  —  an  outward  thing,  and  an  inward  faculty. 
Sunshine  is  of  no  use  in  an  eyeless  world;  and  the 
most  sensitive  retina  is  wasted  in  the  dark.  The 
impressions  we  receive  are  the  result  of  a  relation 
between  the  scene  by  which  we  are  environed,  and 
the  mind  with  which  we  survey  it ;  take  away  either 
term  of  this  relation,  and  the  other  disappears.  In 
like  manner,  alter  the  character  of  either  term,  and 
the  relation  ceases  to  be  the  same.  The  sweet  may 
become  bitter,  not  only  by  chemical  changes  in  the 
substance,  but  by  the  sick  palate  of  the  taster.  And 
if  it  were  the  Creator's  will  to  paint  afresh  the 
spectacle  of  his  works  visible  from  this  earth,  and 
make  the  heavens  green  and  the  grass  like  fire,  he 
might  work  the  miracle,  either  by  revising  the  laws 
of  light  and  color,  or  by  fitting  up  our  visual  power 
anew,  and  tinging  its  glass  with  different  shades. 
Nor  could  we  ever,  in  such  case,  tell  which  it  was ; 
our  consciousness  commencing  with  the  effect  and 
43 


506  THE    SINGLE    AND    THE    EYIL    EYE. 

not  reaching  back  to  the  cause.  Just  as  it  would,  if 
all  our  measures  of  time  were  to  be  simultaneously 
accelerated  to  a  double  speed.  Under  such  condi- 
tions, an  apparent  revolution  would  take  place  in  the 
duration  of  all  phenomena.  It  would  seem,  that 
human  life  had  resumed  its  patriarchal  length,  and  all 
recent  history  would  appear  as  through  a  diminish- 
ing medium.  Nor  indeed  is  it  any  idle  fancy  that 
such  changes  are  possible.  We  even  feel  the  warn- 
ing touch  of  them  day  by  day ;  and  their  faint  breath, 
like  a  passing  chill  trespassing  from  the  invisible, 
sweeps  by  and  leaves  an  awe  on  thoughtful  hearts. 
If  self-forgetful  activity,  or  the  lively  commerce  of 
mind  with  mind,  can  dwindle  hours  into  minutes, 
while  a  dull  and  heavy  sorrow  may  protract  a  night 
into  an  age ;  if  the  dream  of  a  few  instants  can  com- 
prise the  history  of  years ;  —  how  evident  is  it  that 
our  apparent  time,  which  is  our  real  life,  stretches  or 
shrinks  with  the  variable  moods  of  the  mind ;  that 
not  only  does  the  way  we  go  become  as  the  moist 
meadow  or  the  parched  desert,  according  as  we 
gaze  through  the  cool  lens  of  a  pure  health,  or  the 
throbbing  eye  of  fever,  but  by  the  quicker  or  slower 
pace  of  thought,  we  may  be  made  to  fly  across  the 
soft  grass  of  our  refreshment,  or  crawl  over  the  hot 
sands  of  our  torture;  that,  by  only  such  shifting 
of  our  time-measures  as  occurs  in  each  night's  sleep, 
a  thousand  years  might  become  to  us  also  as  one 
day,  or  one  day  as  a  thousand  years ;  that  thus  the 
smallest  element  of  joy  or  woe  might  be  multiplied 
into  infinite  value,  and  a  heaven  or  hell  be  construct- 
ed from  the  feeling  dropped  by  a  moment's  passing 
wing!  Here,  at  least,  the  veil  of  tender  mercy  be- 
comes transparent,  which  alone  screens  us  from,  a  lot 
more  terrible  than  death. 


THE    SIXGLE    AND    THE    EVIL    EYE.  507 

So  far,  however,  as  our  views  of  things  are  deter- 
mined by  the  endowments  conceded  to  our  nature,  we 
accept  them  with  -a  calm  content.  We  know,  indeed, 
that  God  might  have  made  us  otherwise,  and  so  have 
set  quite  a  different  universe  before  us ;  nor  have  we 
the  smallest  power  of  comparing  that  possible  system 
of  phenomena  with  this  actual,  so  as  to  demonstrate 
which  of  them  may  best  agree  with  the  truth  of 
things.  This  is  a  matter  which,  like  all  the  founda- 
tions of  our  being,  must  rest  on  faith  ;  it  is  one  of  our 
very  roots,  which  we  cannot  manufacture  for  our- 
selves in  the  dry  light;  —  which  we  cannot  even 
scrape  up  to  look  up  at  how  it  lives;  —  but  which  in- 
sits  on  growing  down  into  the  darkness,  and  spread- 
ing its  fibres  through  the  subsoil  of  nature.  It  is  plain, 
that  if  our  faculties  were  in  themselves  incapable  and 
deceptive;  or  if  they  were  hopelessly  vitiated  by 
secret  and  resistless  causes,  —  there  would  be  no  help 
for  us.  We  could  no  more  lift  ourselves  above  our 
illusions  and  perversions,  than  the  ape  could  raise 
himself  into  a  man,  or  the  man  into  an  angel.  We 
cannot  issue  from  ourselves,  and  alight  upon  a  sta- 
tion outside  our  own  nature;  that  nature  is  with  us 
when  we  judge  it,  and  does  but  pass  sentence  on 
itself.  We  cannot  think  of  the  laws  of  thought,  but 
by  remaining  within  them;  or  estimate  what  we 
know,  except  as  an  element  of  knowledge.  However 
often  the  drop  may  turn  itself  inside  out,  and  circu- 
late its  particles  from  centre  to  surface,  and  from  pole 
to  pole,  it  remains  the  same  constant  sphere,  reflect- 
ing the  same  vault  that  hangs  over  it,  and  yielding 
to  the  same  attractions  stirring  within  it.  And  while 
there  would  be  no  help  for  such  human  incapacity, 
there  would  be  no  consciousness  of  it.  To  be  con- 


508  THE    SINGLE    AND     THE    EVIL    EYE. 

scions  of  it  would  be  to  escape  it,  —  to  have  a  rule 
of  judgment  exempted  from  its  operation;  for  he 
who  sees  that  he  has  missed  the  truth,  misses  it  no 
more.  Faith  therefore  in  our  own  faculties,  as  God 
has  given  them,  is  at  the  very  basis  of  all  knowledge 
and  belief,  on  things  human  or  divine ;  —  an  act  of 
primitive  religion,  so  inevitable  that  without  it  scep- 
ticism itself  cannot  even  begin,  but  wanders  about 
through  the  inane,  in  fruitless  search  for  a  point  on 
which  to  hang  its  first  sophistic  thread.  And  each 
one  of  our  natural  powers  is  to  be  implicitly  trusted 
within  its  own  sphere,  and  not  beyond  it ;  the  senses, 
as  reporters  of  the  outward  world ;  the  understanding, 
in  the  ascertainment  of  laws  and  the  interpretation 
of  nature;  the  reason  and  conscience,  in  the  ordering 
of  life,  the  discernment  of  God,  and  the  following  of 
religion.  Whoever  tries  to  shake  their  authority,  as 
the  ultimate  appeal  in  their  several  concerns,  though 
he  may  think  himself  a  saint,  is  in  fact  an  infidel. 
Whoever  pretends  that  anything  can  be  above  them, 
—  be  it  a  book  or  a  church,  —  is  secretly  cutting  up 
all  belief  by  the  roots.  Whoever  tells  me  that  pro- 
phet or  apostle  set  himself  above  them,  and  contra- 
dicted, instead  of  reverently  interpreting  and  rendering 
audible,  the  whispers  of  the  highest  soul,  is  charge- 
able with  fixing  on  the  messengers  of  God  the  sure 
sign  of  imposture  or  of  wildness.  To  tell  me,  with 
warnings  against  my  erring  faculties,  that  a  thing  is 
divine  which  offends  my  devoutest  preception  of  the 
true  and  holy ;  —  as  well  might  you  persuade  me  to 
admire  the  sweetness  of  a  discord  by  abusing  my 
sense  of  hearing,  or  to  prefer  a  sign-board  to  a  Raf- 
faelle  by  enumerating  optical  illusions  and  preaching 
on  the  imperfections  of  sight.  Amid  the  clamor  of 


XHE    SINGLE    AXD    THE    ETIL    EYE.  509 

dissonant  theologies,  let  us  sit  then,  with  a  com- 
posed love,  at  the  feet  of  him  who  pointed  to  the 
way,  —  which  no  doubt  can  darken  and  no  knowledge 
close,  —  of  seeing'  God  through  purity  of  heart.  That 
clear  and  single  eye,  filling  the  soul  with  light;  what 
is  it  but  the  open  thought  and  conscience  by  which 
the  truth  of  heaven  streams  in?  And  does  not  Jesus 
appeal  to  this  as  our  only  rescue  from  utter  darkness 
and  spiritual  eclipse?  If  so,  then  men  can  see  for 
themselves  in  things  divine.  They  are  not  required  to 
take  on  trust  a  rule  of  life  and  faith,  in  which  they 
would  discern  no  authority  and  feel  no  confidence, 
were  it  not  for  the  seal  it  professes  to  carry,  and  the 
affidavit  with  which  it  is  superscribed.  A  system, 
indeed,  befriended  on  the  mere  strength  of  its  letters 
of  recommendation  misses  everything  divine.  A  rule 
which  cannot  authorize  itself  is  no  rule  of  duty,  no 
source  of  obligation ;  but,  at  best,  only  a  maxim  of 
policy  and  instructions  of  self-interest.  Till  it  touches 
us  with  its  internal  sanctity  and  excellence,  and  we 
can  no  longer  neglect  it  without  shame  and  remorse 
as  well  as  fear,  our  adoption  of  it  is  not  moral,  but 
mimetic ;  we  imitate  the  things  which  may  be  duty 
to  persons  who  have  a  conscience,  but  which  are  no 
duty  to  us.  If  Christ  alone  had  personal  and  first- 
hand discernment  of  the  truth  and  authority  of 
Christianity,  and  all  other  men  have  to  take  it  solely 
on  his  word,  then  Christianity  wholly  ceases  to  be  a 
Religion,  and  the  compliance  with  it  becomes  a  mere 
simial  observance  of  the  movements  of  a  great  pos- 
ture-master of  the  soul.  It  is  as  if  God  had  sent  one 
solitary  being  gifted  with  eye-sight  into  a  world  of 
the  blind,  to  teach  them  to  act  as  though  they  could 
see ;  groping  about  in  dark  places,  and  shading  their 

43* 


510  THE    SINGLE   AND    THE    ETIL    EYE. 

faces  in  a  blaze;  in  which  case,  the  actions,  proceed- 
ing from  no  vision,  would  have  no  meaning,  and, 
though  displaying  docility,  would  border  on  foolish- 
ness and  hypocrisy.  Turn  the  matter  as  we  may,  it 
will  appear  that  the  fullest,  most  unqualified  admis- 
sion of  a  moral  and  rational  nature  in  man,  whose 
decisions  no  external  power  can  overrule,  and  which 
constitutes  God's  ever  open  court  for  trying  the 
claims  of  scripture  and  prophecy,  no  less  than  of 
philosophy,  is  the  prime  requisite  of  all  devout  faith; 
without  which,  duty  loses  its  sacredness,  revelation 
its  significance,  and  God  himself  his  authority. 

Though,  however,  our  first  act  of  faith  must  be 
an  implicit  trust  in  the  powers,  through  which  alone 
divine  things  are  apprehensible  by  us,  it  must  be  a 
trust  in  the  intrinsic  nature  which  God  has  given 
them,  not  in  the  actual  state  to  which  we  may  have 
reduced  them.  They  are  liable  to  the  same  law  as 
the  inferior  endowments  which  connect  us  with  ma- 
terial things;  attaining  clearness  and  precision  with 
faithful  use;  vitiated  and  discolored  by  abuse;  be- 
numbed and  confused  by  disuse.  The  eye  that  had 
been  long  closed  in  privation,  opened  at  first  with  so 
little  discernment  as  to  see  '  men  like  trees,  walking.' 
And  the  soul  shut  up  from  earnest  meditation,  and 
drowsy  amid  the  heavenly  light  to  which  it  should 
direct  its  patient  gaze,  is  likely  to  see  God,  like  Fate, 
sleeping;  or  like  a  ghost,  unreal;  or  like  the  master- 
builder,  retreating  from  the  ship  he  has  launched 
upon  the  waves ;  or  like  the  spectrum  of  the  sun,  a 
patch  of  darkness  perforating  the  heavens,  where 
once  looked  forth  a  glorious  orb,  '  of  this  great  world 
both  eye  and  soul.'  Surely  it  is  a  truth  of  personal 
experience,  that  our  views  of  God,  of  the  life  we  live, 


THE    SINGLE   AND    THE   EVIL   EYE.  511 

of  the  world  we  occupy,  materially  change  according 
to  the  caprices  of  our  own  mind.     When  the  spirits 
are  sinking,  and  the  press  of  the  world  arises  in  its 
strength ;  when  the  will  trembles  and  faints  beneath 
its  load,  and  the  hours  seem  to  dash  exulting  by  and 
leave  us  at  a  cruel  distance ;  when  the  presence  of 
more  energetic  and  devoted  souls  fills  us  with  a  sor- 
rowing reverence,  and  humbles  us  to  the  dust  with  self- 
reproach  ;  when  the  silent  shadow  of  lost  opportunity 
sits   cold   upon   us,   and   the   memory   of    misspent 
moments  drips  upon  the  sad  heart,  like  rain-drops 
from  the  wintry  boughs;  —  then,  no  peace  of  God, 
no  tranquil  order  of  life,  no  free  and  open  affection, 
seems  possible  again ;  the  bow  of  hope  has  fled  from 
heaven,  and  the  green  sod  of  the  earth  is  elastic  to 
our  feet  no  more ;  the  very  universe  seems  stricken 
with  a  rod  of  disappointment  that  has  turned  it  into 
lead  ;  and  Providence  either  vanishes  utterly  from  our 
view,  or  appears  to  us  as  a  hard  task-master,  that 
lashes  a  jaded  strength,  and  lays  on  us  a  burthen 
greater  than  we  can  bear.     At   other   times,  when 
perhaps  some  affliction  cast  us  down,  or  some  call  of 
arduous  duty  startles  us,  we  have  clearness  enough 
left  to  pray  with  a  mighty  and  uplifted  heart.     God 
seems  to  behold  the   silence   of  our  surrender,  and 
snatches  us  up  into  the  infinite   deliverance.      The 
soul   retreats  within,  and  sees  his  light;  it  spreads 
without,  and  feels  his  power.     We  can  put  our  heel 
on  toil  and  fear,  and  move  over  them  with  the  spring 
of  resolution.     A  glory  spreads  over  the  clouds  of 
sorrow,  that  makes  them  majestic  as  the  serene  and 
open  sky ;  they  hang  over  us  as  a  canopy  of  heavenly 
fire,  the  hiding-place  of  a  thunder  that  terrifies  us  not; 
or  as  the  piled  mountains  of  a  sublimer  world,  in 


512  THE    SINGLE    AND    THE    EVIL    EYE. 

whose  awful  valleys  we  would  abide,  though  threat- 
ened by  the  roar  of  the  avalanche,  and  the  advancing 
glacier  of  inevitable  death.     The  things  so  huge  to 
the  microscopic  eye  of  care  retreat  into  infinite  little- 
ness before  the  sweep  of  a  more  comprehensive  vision. 
Whole  floods  of  trouble,  peopled  with   terrors,  be- 
come as  dew-drops  on  the  grass;  and  the  very  earth 
itself,  with  its  crowd  of  struggling  interests,  appears 
as  a  calm  orb  floating  in  the  deeps  of  heaven.     Mo- 
ments like  these  occur  in  the  history  of  all  tried  and 
faithful  minds;   and  comprise  within  them  a  larger 
portion  of  existence  than  years  of  the  eating,  drink- 
ing and  sleeping,  the  bargaining  and  book-keeping, 
which  men  call  life.     They  are  the  beacons  and  land- 
marks of  our  spiritual  way,  alone  remaining  visible 
over    long    reaches   of    our    career.      Nor   do   they 
stand  alone,  to  show  how  our  own  rnood  affects,  for 
better  or  worse,  the  views  we  take  of  things  above 
us.     Let  a  man  go  suddenly  from  the  meal  of  luxury 
to  the  death-bed  of  selfishness,  where  no  love  lingers, 
and  tears  only  pretend  to  flow;  let  him  pass  from  the 
sense  of  animal  enjoyment  to  the  spectacle  of  animal 
extinction ;  —  and  he  will  inevitably  believe  in  annihi- 
lation.    The  saintly  words  of  everlasting  hope  will 
be  as  a  strange  jargon  in  his  ears;  the  death-rattle  on 
the  bed  will   put  out    all  the  silent  possibilities  of 
eternity;   he  will  shake  off  the  remembrance  of  them 
as  the  remnants  of  a  troubled  dream ;    and  return, 
with  a  shrug,  to  the  table  of  his  enjoyment,  to  'eat 
and  drink,  since  to-morrow  he  dies.'     But  only  let 
the  heart  beat  with  love,  and  the  eye  look  upon  the 
scene  through  the  perspective  of  an  infinite  sorrow ; 
let  it   be  the   child    catching  the  last  accents  of   a 
parent  venerated  for  richness  of  wisdom  and  great- 


THE    SINGLE   AXD    THE    EVIL    EYE.  513 

ness  of  life;  or  the  parents,  resigning  the  child  whose 
infancy  is  the  most  graceful  picture  in  their  memory, 
to  whose  opening  wonder  they  have  held  the  guid- 
ing hand,  whose  expanding  reason  they  have  sought 
to  fill  with  order  and  with  light,  whose  deepen- 
ing earnestness  of  duty  and  trust  of  pure  affection 
has  revived  their  fainting  will,  and  refreshed  them 
with  a  thankful  mind;  and  do  you  think  that  any 
doubt  will  linger  there?  Do  you  suppose  that  that 
father  or  that  child  will  be  buried  in  the  earth  or  sea? 

—  can  be  hidden  from  the  eyes  by  mountains  of  dust, 
or  the  waves  of  any  unfathomable  ocean?     Ah  no! 
All   matter  becomes  transparent  to  inextinguishable 
light  like  this;  and  soil,  and  air,  and  water,  and  time, 
and  the  realm  of  death,  must  let  this  lamb  of  God 
shine  through;  and  we  follow  it  as  it  recedes  in  the 
holy  darkness ;  till  we  too  await  the  divine  hand,  and 
hope,  with  that  help,  to  overtake  it  once  again.    Nay, 
can  any  one  deny,  that  it  is  often  possible  to  fore- 
know a  man's  moral  and  religious  faith,  by  mere 
acquaintance  with  the  general  temper  of  his  mind? 

—  that  even  his  outward  professions  themselves  go 
for  little  with  us,  if  they  are  violently   at  variance 
with  this  natural  expectation  ?     It  is  useless  to  tell 
me,  of  a  libertine  and  Epicurean,  that  he  believes  in 
the    Divine    Rule,  and   is    a   devout   worshipper   at 
church.     I  know  him  to  be  an   atheist  by  a  surer 
mark  than  words  and  postures,  —  by  a  necessity  of 
corrupted  nature,  which  can  only  be  reversed  by  a 
renovated  life.    Nor  need  you  try  to  persuade  me  that 
a  soul  pure,  tender,  merciful,  has  any  real  faith  in  a 
relentless  Hell,  where  the  cry  of  penitence  can  avail 
no  more.     Such  things  may  stand  written  in  creeds 
which  those  gentle  lips  may  still  repeat;  but  let  the 


514  THE    SINGLE   AND    THE    ETIL    EYE. 

heretic  friend  or  son  die  away  from  her  arms,  and 
she  will  find  some  divine  excuse  for  keeping  the  tor- 
ment far  away.  The  eye  of  love  is  too  clear  and 
single,  to  allow  of  the  light  that  is  in  it  becoming  so 
dread  a  darkness  as  that  impossible  faith. 

Such  then  as  the  man  is,  such  is  his  belief;  and  the 
faith  to  which  he  bears  his  testimony,  testifies  in 
return  of  him.  He  sees  such  things  as  his  soul  is 
qualified  to  show  him ;  nor  can  he  describe  the  pros- 
pect before  him  without  betraying  the  direction  to 
which  his  window  turns.  Let  it  not  be  supposed  that 
truth  and  falsehood  are  thus  rendered  arbitrary  and 
precariously  distinguished ;  that,  as  there  is  a  differ- 
ent interpretation  of  life  and  discernment  of  God  for 
every  temper  of  the  mind,  all  are  probable  alike,  and 
none  deserving  of  our  trust.  It  would  be  so,  if  we 
were  always  imprisoned  in  the  same  temper,  and 
unable  to  compare  it  with  another;  or  if,  on  the 
admission  of  such  comparison,  we  could  perceive  no 
ground  of  difference,  no  reason  of  preference.  But 
we  are  ever  passing  from  mood  to  mood  of  thought; 
and  it  is  not  hidden  from  us  which  are  sound  and 
worthy,  which  are  corrupt  and  mean.  We  know  our 
shameful  from  our  noble  hours;  and  we  cannot 
honestly  pretend  to  confide  in  the  insinuations  of  the 
one,  as  we  do  in  the  inspirations  of  the  other.  Who 
can  affect  unconsciousness  of  the  times,  when  the 
climate  of  his  soul  is  dull  and  stagnant,  and  thick 
with  fog;  and  when  it  is  clear  and  fresh,  and  eager  to 
transmit  the  light?  Who  can  presume  to  compare 
the  murky  doubts  and  damp  short-sightedness  of 
the  one,  with  the  sunny  outlook  and  far  horizon  of 
the  other;  or  ask,  in  good  faith,  'How  do  I  know 
which  of  these  views  is  true  ? '  So  long  as  the  cloud 


THE    SINGLE    AND    THE    EVIL    EYE.  515 

does  not  fixedly  close  upon  the  heart,  but  light  enough 
darts  in  to  show  us  the  intermediate  darkness,  excuse 
is  shut  out,  and  hope  remains.  The  slightest  open- 
ing left  may  be  enlarged ;  Heaven  will  look  in,  and 
may  melt  the  margin  as  it  passes  through.  Whoever 
will  reverence  the  glimpses  of  his  better  mind  shall 
find  them  multiplied;  and  even  whilst  they  pass,  they 
may  be  rich  in  revelations.  Faithfully  used,  the 
momentary  transit  may  expound  an  everlasting  truth; 
and  by  predicting,  may  procure,  the  recurrence  of  like 
happy  instants.  Ashamed  of  no  pure  love,  distrust- 
ful of  no  worthy  aspiration,  forgetful  of  no  clear 
insight  once  granted  to  the  soul,  we  shall  find  the 
weight  of  gloom  and  fear  fast  break  away,  and 
beneath  the  open  hemisphere  of  faith  bend  in  the 
worship  of  joy,  and  say,  '  Thou  art  light,  and  in  thee 
is  no  darkness  at  all.' 


XLL 

THE   SEVEN   SLEEPERS. 

ISAIAH  XLVI.  9,  10. 

KEMEMBER  THE  FORMER  THINGS  OF  OLD  :  FOR  I  AM  GOD,  AND  THERE 
IS  NONE  ELSE  ;  I  AM  GOD,  AND  THERE  IS  NONE  LIKE  ME  ;  DECLARING 
THE  END  FROM  THE  BEGINNING,  AND  FROM  ANCIENT  TIMES  THE 
THINGS  THAT  ARE  NOT  YET  DONE  ;  SAYING,  MY  COUNSEL  SHALL 

STAND. 

THE  fictions  of  popular  piety  are  usually  incon- 
stant and  local.  But  there  is  a  legend  of  the  early 
Christianity,  whose  ready  acceptance,  within  a  few 
years  of  its  origin,  is  not  less  remarkable  than  its  wide 
diffusion  through  every  country  from  the  Ganges  to 
the  Thames ;  —  a  legion  which  has  spread  over 
West  and  East  from  the  centres  of  Rome  and  By- 
zantium ;  which  you  may  hear  in  Russia  or  in 
Abyssinia;  and  which  having  seized  on  the  ardent 
fancy  of  Mohammed,  is  found  in  the  Koran,  and  is  as 
familiar  to  the  Arab  and  the  Moor,  as  to  the  Spaniard 
and  the  Greek. 

In  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century,  the  resident  pro- 
prietor of  an  estate  near  Ephesus  was  in  want  of 
building-stone  to  raise  some  cottages  and  granaries 
on  his  farm.  His  fields  sloped  up  the  side  of  a  moun- 
tain, in  which  he  directed  his  slaves  to  open  a  quarry. 
In  obeying  his  orders  they  found  a  spacious  cavern, 
whose  mouth  was  blocked  up  with  masses  of  rock 


THE    SEYEN    SLEEPEKS.  517 

artificially  piled.  On  removing  these,  they^  were 
startled  by  a  dog  suddenly  leaping  from  the  interior. 
Venturing  further  in,  to  a  spot  on  which  the  sunshine, 
no  longer  excluded,  directly  fell,  they  discovered,  just 
turning  as  from  sleep,  and  dazzled  with  the  light, 
seven  young  men  of  dress  and  aspect  so  strange,  that 
the  slaves  were  terrified  and  fled.  The  slumberers,  on 
rising,  found  themselves  ready  for  a  meal ;  and,  the 
cave  being  open,  one  of  them  set  out  for  the  city  to 
buy  food.  On  his  way  through  the  familiar  country 
(for  he  was  a  native  of  Ephesus),  a  thousand  surprises 
struck  him.  The  road  over  which  yesterday's  per- 
secution had  driven  him  was  turned  ;  the  landmarks 
seemed  shifted,  and  gave  a  twisted  pattern  to  the 
fields ;  on  the  green  meadow  of  the  Cayster  had 
sprung  up  a  circus  and  a  mill.  Two  soldiers  were 
seen  approaching  in  the  distance;  hiding  himself  till 
they  were  past,  lest  they  should  be  emissaries  of  im- 
perial intolerance,  he  observed  that  the  accoutrements 
were  fantastic,  the  emblems  of  Decius  were  not  there, 
the  words  that  dropped  from  their  talk  were  in  a 
strange  dialect,  and  their  friendly  company  was  a 
Christian  presbyter.  From  a  rising  ground,  he  looked 
down  the  river  to  the  base  of  Diana's  hill ;  and  lo ! 
the  great  temple,  —  the  world- wide  wonder,  —  was 
nowhere  to  be  seen.  Arrived  at  the  city,  he  found  its 
grand  gate  surmounted  by  a  cross.  In  the  streets, 
rolling  with  new-shaped  vehicles  filled  with  theatrical 
looking  people,  the  very  noises  seemed  to  make  a 
foreign  hum.  He  could  suppose  himself  in  a  city  of 
dreams ;  only  that  here  and  there  appeared  a  house, 
all  whose  rooms  within  he  certainly  knew ;  with  an 
aspect,  however,  among  the  rest,  curiously  dull  and 
dwindled,  as  in  a  new  window  looks  an  old  pane, 
44 


518  THE    SEVEN    SLEEPERS. 

preserved  for  some  line  scratched  by  poet  or  by  sage. 
Before  his  errand  is  quite  forgot,  he  enters  a  bread- 
shop  to  make  his  purchase  ;  offers  the  silver  coin  of 
Decius  in  payment ;  when  the  baker,  whose  astonish- 
ment was  really  manifest  enough,  can  restrain  his 
suspicions  no  longer ;  but  arrests  his  customer  as  the 
owner  of  unlawful  treasure,  and  hurries  him  before 
the  city  court.  There  he  tells  his  tale  ;  that  with  his 
Christian  companions  he  had  taken  refuge  in  the 
cave  from  the  horrors  of  the  Decian  persecution ; 
had  been  pursued  thither,  and  built  in  for  a  cruel 
death ;  had  fallen  asleep  till  wakened  by  the  return- 
ing sun,  let  in  again  by  some  friendly  and  unhoped 
for  hand;  and  crept  back  into  the  town  to  procure 
support  for  life  in  their  retreat.  And  there  too,  in 
reply,  he  hears  a  part  of  the  history  which  he  cannot 
tell ;  that  Decius  had  been  dethroned  by  death  nearly 
two  centuries  ago,  and  paganism  by  the  Truth  full 
one  ;  that,  while  heaven  had  wrapped  him  in  myste- 
rious sleep,  the  earth's  face,  in  its  features  physical 
and  moral,  had  been  changed ;  that  empire  had 
shifted  its  seat  from  the  Tiber  to  the  Bosphorus ; 
that  the  Temple  had  yielded  to  the  Church ;  the 
demons  of  mythology  to  the  saints  and  martyrs  of 
Christendom ;  and  that  he  who  had  quitted  the  city 
in  the  third  century  returned  to  it  in  the  fifth,  and 
stood  under  the  Christian  protection  of  the  second 
Theodosius.  It  is  added,  that  the  Ephesian  clergy 
and  their  people  were  conducted  by  the  confessor  to 
the  cave,  exchanging  wonders  as  they  conversed  by 
the  way ;  and  that  the  seven  sleepers,  having  attested 
in  their  persons  the  preserving  hand  of  God,  and  re- 
told the  story  of  their  life,  and  heard  snatches  of  the 
news  of  nearly  two  hundred  years,  gave  their  parting 


THE    SEYEN    SLEEPERS.  519 

blessing  to  the  multitude,  and  sank  in  the  silence 
of  natural  death. 

For  the  purpose  of  mental  experiment,  fable  is  as 
good  as  fact.  To  reveal  our  nature  to  itself,  it  is 
often  .more  effectual  for  the  imagination  to  go  out 
upon  a  fiction,  than  for  the  memory  to  absorb  a 
chronicle.  When  the  citizens  and  the  sleepers  met, 
each  was  awe-struck  at  the  other ;  yet  no  one  had 
been  conscious  of  anything  awful  in  himself.  The 
youths,  startled  by  the  police  of  Paganism,  had  risen 
up  from  dinner,  leaving  their  wine  untasted  ;  and  on 
arriving  breathless  at  their  retreat,  laid  themselves 
down,  dusty,  weary,  ordinary  creatures  enough.  They 
resume  the  thread  of  being  where  it  hung  suspended  ; 
and  are  greeted  everywhere  with  the  uplifted  hands, 
and  shrinking  touch  of  devout  amazement.  And  the 
busy  Ephesians  had  dressed  themselves  that  morning, 
and  swept  their  shops,  and  run  down  to  the  office  and 
the  dock,  with  no  idea  that  they  were  not  the  most 
commonplace  of  mortals,  pushing  through  a  toilsome 
and  sultry  career.  They  are  stopped,  mid-day  to  be 
assured,  that  their  familiar  life  is  an  incredible  ro- 
mance, that  their  city  is  steeped  in  visionary  tints, 
and  they  themselves  are  as  moving  apparitions.  And 
they  are  told  this,  when  they  cannot  laugh  at  it,  or 
brush  it,  like  Sunday  memories,  away.  For  who  are 
they  that  say  such  things,  gazing  into  them  with  full 
deep  eyes?  Counterparts  in  their  looks  of  all  the 
marvels  they  profess  to  see;  —  proofs  that  the  old, 
dead  times  were  once  alive,  warm  with  young  pas- 
sions, noble  with  young  faith ;  astir  with  limbs  that 
could  be  weary,  and  hiding  sorrows  whose  sob  and 
cry  might  be  overheard.  Would  not  the  men,  return- 
ing to  their  homes  be  conscious  of  understanding  life 


520  THE    SEVEN    SLEEPEKS. 

anew  ?  Would  they  not  look  down  upon  their  chil- 
dren, and  up  at  the  portraits  of  their  ancestors, 
with  a  perception  from  which  a  cloud  had  cleared 
away  ?  Would  the  fashion  of  the  drawing-room,  the 
convention  of  the  club,  the  gossip  of  the  exchange, 
retain  all  their  absorbing  interest ;  and  the  wrestlings 
of  doubt  and  duty,  the  sighs  of  reason,  the  conflicts 
of  affection,  the  nearness  of  God,  spoken  of  by 
prophets  in  the  trance  of  inspiration,  and  the  church 
in  its  prayer  of  faith,  appear  any  more  as  idle  words? 
No ;  the  revelation  of  a  reality  in  the  Past,  would 
produce  the  feeling  of  a  reality  in  the  Present.  Many 
invisible  things  would  shape  themselves  forth,  as  with 
a  solid  surface,  reflecting  the  heavenly  light,  and 
sleeping  in  the  colors  of  pure  truth;  many  visible 
things  would  melt  in  films  away,  and  retreat  like 
the  escaping  vista  of  a  dream.  When  the  people's 
anthem  went  up  on  the  Sabbath  morning, '  O  God  of 
our  fathers  ! '  that  grave,  historic  cry  would  not  seem 
to  set  his  spirit  far,  but  to  bring  it  overhanging 
through  the  very  spaces  of  the  dome  above.  When 
the  holy  martyrs  were  named  with  the  glory  of  an 
affectionate  praise,  their  silent  forms  would  seem  to 
group  themselves  meekly  round.  And  when  the 
upper  life  of  saints  and  sages,  —  of  suffering  taken 
in  its  patience  and  goodness  in  its  prime,  of  the  faith- 
ful parent,  and  the  Christ-like  child,  was  mentioned 
with  a  modest  hope,  it  would  appear  no  fabled  island, 
for  which  the  eye  might  stretch  across  the  sea  in  vain, 
but  a  visible  range  of  everlasting  hills,  whose  outline 
of  awful  tfeauty  is  already  steadfast  above  the  deep. 
Now  whence  would  spring  an  influence  like  this? 
what  source  must  we  assign  to  the  power  which  such 
incident  would  have  exerted  over  its  witnesses  ?  The 


THE    SEVEN    SLEEPEKS.  521 

essence  of  it  is  simply  this;  the  Past  stood  up  in  the 
face  of  the  Present,  and  spake  with  it;  and  they 
found  each  other  out ;  and  each  learned  that  he  be- 
held the  other  with  true  eye,  and  himself  with  false. 
The  lesson  is  not  set  beyond  our  reach.  No  miracle 
indeed  is  sent  to  teach  it;  no  grotesque  extracts  from 
bygone  centuries  walk  about  among  us.  But  our 
ties  with  other  days  are  not  broken;  fragments  of 
them  stand  around  us ;  notices  of  them  lie  before  us. 
The  recesses  of  time  are  not  hopelessly  dark ;  opened 
by  the  hand  of  labor,  and  penetrated  by  the  light  of 
reason,  their  sleeping  forms  will  rise  and  re-enter  our 
living  world,  and  in  showing  us  what  they  have  been, 
disclose  to  us  what  we  are.  The  legendary  youths 
are  but  the  impersonations  of  history;  and  their  visit 
to  the  Ephesians,  but  a  parable  of  the  relation  be- 
tween historical  perception  and  religious  faith. 

The  great  end,  yet  the  great  difficulty,  of  religion 
is,  so  to  analyze  our  existence  for  us,  as  to  distinguish 
its  essential  spirit  from  its  casual  forms,  the  real  from 
the  apparent,  the  transient  from  the  eternal.  Experi- 
ence mixes  them  all  up  together,  and  arranges  noth- 
ing according  to  its  worth.  The  dress  that  clothes 
the  body,  and  the  body  that  clothes  the  soul,  appear 
in  such  invariable  conjunction,  and  become  so  much 
the  signs  of  one  another,  that  all  run  into  one  object, 
and  tempt  us  to  exaggerate  the  trivial  and  depreciate 
the  great.  That  which  a  man  has,  and  that  which 
he  is,  move  about  together,  and  live  in  the  same 
house ;  till  our  fancy  and  our  faith  grow  too  indolent 
to  separate  them;  we  fasten  him  to  his  possessions, 
and  when  they  are  dropped  in  death,  think  that  he  is 
gone  to  nought.  It  is  the  business  of  faith  to  see  all 
things  in  their  intrinsic  value;  it  is  the  work  of  ex- 
44* 


522  THE    SEVEN    SLEEPERS. 

perience  to  thrust  them  on  us  in  accidental  combina- 
tions; and  hence  the  flattening,  sceptical,  blinding 
influence  of  a  passive  and  unresisted  experience. 
Hence  it  is  that  time  is  apt  to  take  away  a  truth  for 
each  one  that  he  gives,  and  rather  to  change  our  wis- 
dom than  to  increase  it;  and  while  foresight  assured- 
ly comes  to  man,  insight  will  often  tarry  with  the 
child.  When  the  eye  first  looks  on  life,  it  is  not  to 
study  its  successions,  but  to  rest  upon  its  picture ;  its 
loveliness  is  discerned  before  its  order ;  its  aspect  is 
interpreted,  while  its  policy  is  quite  unknown.  Our 
early  years  gaze  on  all  things  through  the  natural 
glass  of  beauty  and  affection,  which  in  religion  is  the 
instrument  of  truth.  But  soon  it  gets  dimmed  by  the 
breath  of  usage,  which  adheres  to  all  except  natures 
the  most  pure  and  fine;  and  a  cold  cloud  darkens 
the  whole  universe  before  us.  Day  by  day,  the  un- 
derstanding sees  more,  the  imagination  less,  in  the 
scene  around  us ;  till  it  seems  all  made  up  of  soil  to 
grow  our  bread,  and  clay  to  build  our  house ;  and  we 
become  impatient,  if  any  one  pretends  to  find  in  it 
the  depth  which  its  atmosphere  has  lost  to  us,  and 
the  grandeur  which  has  faded  from  our  view.  We 
dwell  in  this  world,  like  dull  serfs  in  an  Alpine  land; 
who  are  attached  indeed  to  their  home  with  the 
strong  instincts  of  men  cut  off' from  much  intercourse 
with  their  kind,  and  whose  passions,  wanting  diffu- 
sion, acquire  a  local  intensity ;  who  therefore  sigh  in 
absence  for  their  mountains,  as  the  Arab  for  his  desert; 
but  in  whom  there  is  no  sense  of  the  glories  amid 
which  they  live ;  who  wonder  what  the  traveller 
comes  to  see ;  who  in  the  valleys  closed  by  the  gla- 
cier, and  echoing  with  the  torrent,  observe -only  the 
timber  for  their  fuel,  and  the  paddock  for  their  kine. 


THE    SEVEN    SLEEPERS.  523 

We  are  often  the  last  to  see  how  noble  are  our  oppor- 
tunities, to  feel  how  inspiring  the  voices  that  call  us 
to  high  duties  and  productive  sacrifice ;  and  while  we 
loiter  on  in  the  track  of  drowsy  habit,  esteeming  our 
lot  common  and  profane,  better  hearts  are  looking  on, 
burning  within  them  to  stand  on  the  spot  where  we 
stand,  to  seize  its  hopes,  and  be  true  to  all  its  sacred- 
ness.  It  is  an  abuse  of  the  blessings  of  experience, 
when  it  thus  stupefies  us  with  its  benumbing  touch, 
and  in  teaching  us  a  human  lesson,  persuades  us  to 
unlearn  a  divine.  The  great  use  of  custom  is  to 
teach  us  what  to  expect,  to  familiarize  us  with  the 
order  of  events  from  day  to  day,  that  we  may  com- 
pute our  way  aright,  and  know  how  to  rule  whatever 
lies  beneath  our  hand.  This  is  the  true  school  for 
the  active,  working  will.  But  for  the  thoughtful, 
wondering  affections,  a  higher  discipline  is  needed; 
an  excursion  beyond  the  limits  where  the  senses  stop, 
into  regions  where  usage,  breathless  and  exhausted, 
drops  behind;  where  the  beaten  ways  of  expectation 
disappear,  and  we  must  find  the  sun-path  of  faith 
and  reason,  or  else  be  lost.  Only  by  baffled  anticipa- 
tion do  we  learn  to  revere  what  is  above  our  hand ; 
and  custom  must  break  in  pieces  before  us,  if  we  are 
to  keep  right  the  everlasting  love  within  us,  as  well 
as  the  transient  life  without.  Surrendering  itself  to 
habit  alone,  the  mind  takes  step  by  step  right  on, 
intent  on  the  narrow  strip  of  its  own  time,  and  see- 
ing nothing  but  its  linear  direction.  But  brought  to 
the  untrodden  mountain-side,  it  is  arrested  by  the 
open  ground,  and  challenged  by  the  very  silence,  and 
compelled  to  look  abroad  in  space,  and  see  the  fresh, 
wide  world  of  God  where  all  roads  have  vanished, 
except  the  elemental  high-ways  of  nature,  —  the 


524  THE    SEVEN    SLEEPEKS. 

sweep  of  storm-felled  pines,  and  the  waving-line 
where  melted  waters  flow.  Now,  in  shaking  off  the 
heavy  dreams  of  custom,  and  waking  us  up  from  the 
swoon  so  fatal  to  piety,  religion  receives  the  greatest 
aid  from  history ;  and  though  they  seem  to  be  engaged 
in  opposite  offices,  they  only  divide  between  them 
the  very  same.  Religion  strips  the  costume  from  the 
life  that  is;  History  restores  the  costume  of  the  life 
that  was ;  and  by  this  double  action  we  learn  to  feel 
sensibly,  where  the  mere  dress  ends  and  the  true  life 
begins;  how  much  thievish  time  may  steal,  and  cor- 
roding age  reduce  to  dross ;  and  what  treasure  there 
is,  which  no  thief  approacheth  or  moth  corrupteth. 
Those  who  are  shut  up  in  the  present,  either  by  in- 
voluntary ignorance,  or  by  voluntary  devotion  to  its 
immediate  interests,  contract  a  certain  slowness  of 
imagination,  most  fatal  both  to  wisdom  and  to  faith. 
Restrained  in  every  direction  by  agglutination  to  the 
type  of  personal  experience,  their  thought  cannot 
pass  beyond  vulgar  and  material  rules ;  cannot  be- 
lieve in  any  aspect  of  existence  much  different  from 
things  as  they  are ;  in  any  beings  far  removed  from 
those  that  walk  the  streets  to-day;  in  any  events  that 
would  look  absurd  in  the  newspaper,  or  affect  saga- 
cious politicians  with  serious  surprise.  Their  feeling 
can  make  nothing  of  the  distinction  between  the 
mortal  and  the  immortal,  the  spirit  and  the  form 
of  things.  If  they  moralize  on  human  affairs,  it 
is  only  to  say  one  of  the  two  things  which,  since 
the  days  of  Ecclesiastes,  have  always  fallen  from 
Epicurism  in  its  sentimental  mood;  that  all  things 
continue  as  they  were,  and  there  can  be  nothing  new 
under  the  sun ;  or  that  nothing  can  continue  as  it  is, 
and  all  that  is  sublunary  passes  as  the  shadow;  and 


THE    SEVEX    SLEEPERS.  525 

as  this  dieth,  so  dieth  that.  A  mind,  rich  in  the  past, 
is  protected  against  these  mean  falsehoods;  can  dis- 
criminate the  mutable  social  forms,  from  that  per- 
manent humanity,  of  whose  affections,  whose  strug- 
gles, whose  aspirations,  whose  Providential  course, 
history  is  the  impressive  record;  and  thus  trained, 
finds  it  easy  to  cast  an  eye  of  faith  upon  the  living 
word,  and  discern  the  soul  of  individuals  and  of  com- 
munities beneath  the  visible  disguise,  so  deceitful  to 
the  shallow,  so  suggestive  to  the  wise.  The  habit  of 
realizing  the  past  is  essential  to  that  of  idealizing 
the  present. 

But,  besides  this  general  affinity  between  historical 
thought  and  religious  temper,  a  more  direct  influence 
of  knowledge  upon  faith  is  not  difficult  to  trace. 
The  great  object  of  our  belief  and  trust  cannot  be 
conceived  of,  except  in  the  poorest  and  faintest  way, 
where  all  is  blank  beyond  mere  personal  experience. 
A  man  to  whom  the  present  is  the  only  illuminated 
spot,  closely  pressed  in  upon  by  outlying  darkness  all 
around,  will  vainly  strive  to  meditate,  for  example, 
on  the  eternity  of  God.  What  sort  of  helpless  at- 
tempt even  can  he  make  towards  such  a  thing  ?  He 
knows  the  measure  of  an  hour,  a  day,  a  year;  and 
these  he  may  try  to  multiply  without  end,  to  stretch 
along  the  line  of  the  infinite  life.  But  this  numerical 
operation  carries  no  impression ;  it  has  no  more  re- 
ligion in  it,  than  any  other  long  sum.  The  mere 
vacant  arithmetic  of  duration  travels  ineffectually  on; 
glides  through  without  contact  with  the  Living  God ; 
and  gives  only  the  chill  of  a  void  loneliness.  Time, 
like  Space,  cannot  be  appreciated  by  merely  looking 
into  it.  As  in  the  desert,  stretching  its  dreary  dust  to 
the  horizon,  all  dimensions  are  lost  in  the  shadowless 


526  THE    SEVEN    SLEEPERS. 

sunshine;   so,  over  a  mere  waste  of  years,  the  fancy 
strains  itself  only  to  turn  dizzy.     As,  in  the  one,  we 
want   objects  to  mark   the   retreating   distance,  the 
rising  spire,  the  sheltered  green,  the  swelling  light  on 
headland  slope;    so,  in  the    other,  we   need  visible 
events  standing  off  from  view  to  make  us  aware  of 
the  great  perspective.      And  for   the   ends  of  faith, 
they  must  be  moral  vicissitudes,  the  deeply-colored 
incidents  of  human  life ;  or,  the  vastness  which  we  see 
we  shall  not  love;  we  shall  traverse  the  infinite,  and 
never  worship.     Science,  as  well  as  history,  has  its 
Past  to  show;  —  a  Past,  indeed,  much  larger;   run- 
ning, with  huge  strides,  deep  into  the   old  Eternity. 
But  its  immensity  is  dynamical,  not  divine;  gigan- 
tesque,   not   holy;   opening  to   us   the   monotonous 
perseverance   of    physical    forces,    not    the    various 
struggles   and   sorrows   of  free   will.      And   though 
sometimes,  on  passing  from  the  turmoil  of  the  city, 
and  the  heats  of  restless  life,  into  the  open  temple  of 
the  silent  universe,  we  are  tempted  to  think,  that  there 
is  the  taint  of  earth,  and  here  the  purity  of  heaven ; 
yet  sure  it  is,  that  God  is  seen  by  us  through  man, 
rather  than  through  nature ;  and  that  without  the  eye 
of  our  brother,  and  the  voices  of  our  kind,  the  winds 
might  sigh,  and  the  stars  look  down  on  us  in  vain. 
Nor  is  the  Christian  conception  of  the  second  and 
higher  existence  of  man    heartily  possible  to  those 
who  are  shut  out  from  all  historic  retrospect.     At 
least,  the  idea  of  other  nations  and  other  times,  the 
mental  picture  of  memorable  groups  that  have  passed 
away;  the  lingering  voices  of  poets,  heroes,  saints, 
floating  on  the  ear  of  thought;  are  a  great,  if  not  an 
indispensable  aid  to  all  hope  of  the  future,  which  can 
scarcely  maintain  itself  without  attendant  images. 


THE    SEVEN    SLEEPERS.  527 

That  old,  distant,  venerable  earth  of  ours,  with  its 
quaint  people,  lies  silent  in  the  remote  places  of  our 
thought;  and  is  not  far  from  the  scene  of  scarcely 
more  mysterious  life,  where  all  now  abide  with  God ; 
the  same  perspective  embraces  them  both;  it  is  but 
the  glance  of  an  eye  from  below  to  above ;  and  as  the 
past  reality  of  the  one  does  not  prevent  its  being 
now  ideal,  so  the  present  ideality  of  the  other  is  no 
hindrance  to  its  reality.  The  two  states,  —  that  in 
the  picture  of  history,  and  that  on  the  map  of  faith, 
—  recede  almost  equally  from  our  immediate  experi- 
ence ;  and  the  conception  of  the  one  is  a  sensible  help 
to  the  realization  of  the  other.  Indeed  there  is  not  a 
truth  of  religion  in  reference  to  the  future  and  the 
unseen,  which  the  knowledge  of  the  past  does  not 
bring  nearer  to  our  minds.  And  when  we  invoke  this 
aid  to  faith,  we  give  it  an  ally,  not,  as  might  seem, 
accessible  to  learning  only,  but  singularly  open  to  the 
resources  of  ordinary  men.  Happily,  the  very  foun- 
tains and  depositaries  of  our  religion  are  historical ; 
and  records  of  human  affairs,  not  theories  of  physical 
nature,  are  supplied  in  the  sacred  writings,  from 
which  we  learn  the  lessons  of  Providence.  Apart 
from  all  questions  of  inspiration,  there  is  no  grander 
agent  than  the  Bible  in  this  world.  It  has  opened 
the  devout  and  fervid  East  to  the  wonder  and  affec- 
tion of  the  severer  West.  It  has  made  old  Egypt 
and  Assyria  more  familiar  to  Christendom  than  its 
own  lands;  and  to  our  people  at  large  the  Pharaohs 
are  less  strange  than  the  Plantagenets,  and  Abraham 
is  more  distinct  than  Alfred.  The  Hebrew  prophet 
finds  himself  in  the  presence  of  the  English  trades- 
man, or  domesticated  in  the  Scotch  village;  and  is 
better  understood  when  he  speaks  of  Jordan,  than 


528  THE    SEYEN    SLEEPERS. 

the  poet  at  home  who  celebrates  the  Greta  or  the 
Yarrow.  Scenes  of  beauty,  pictures  of  life,  rise  on  the 
people's  thought  across  the  interval  of  centuries  and 
continents.  Pity  and  terror,  sympathy  and  indigna- 
tion, fly  over  vast  reaches  of  time,  and  alight  on 
many  a  spot  else  unclaimed  by  our  humanity,  and 
unconsecrated  by  the  presence  of  our  God.  It  is  a 
discipline  of  priceless  value ;  securing  for  the  general 
mind  materials  of  thought  and  faith  most  rich  and 
varied;  and  breaking  that  servile  sleep  of  custom, 
which  is  the  worst  foe  of  true  belief  and  noble  hope. 
From  the  extension  of  such  discipline,  according  to 
opportunity,  whosoever  is  vigilant  to  keep  a  living 
faith,  will  draw  ever  fresh  stores ;  and,  that  he  may 
better  dwell  in  heart  with  Him  '  who  declareth  the 
end  from  the  beginning,'  will  '  remember  the  former 
things  of  old.' 


XLII. 

THE    SPHERE  OF    SILENCE. 

I.  MAN'S. 

LUKE  vi.  45. 

OF  THE  ABUNDANCE  OF  THE  HEART,  THE  MOUTH   SPEAKETH. 

IT  is  often  assumed  as  if  implied  in  these  words,  that 
whatever  is  a  fit  subject  for  thought  is  necessarily  the 
fit  subject  of  conversation.  As  language  is  but  the 
expression  of  the  mind,  it  seems  natural  to  suppose 
that  the  mind  must  appear  through  its  medium ;  that 
the  matters  which  occupy  the  lips  must  be  those 
which  engage  the  heart ;  and  that  no  deep  and  pow- 
erful interest  can  fail  to  overflow,  in  its  full  propor- 
tion, on  our  communications  with  each  other.  That 
about  which  silence  is  the  habit,  and  speech  the 
exception,  —  which,  even  in  the  sweet  counsel  of 
friends,  glides  in  but  for  the  moment  and  flits  away, 
—  cannot,  it  is  affirmed,  have  any  strong  and  con- 
stant hold  upon  men ;  and  by  its  transiency,  con- 
fesses itself  to  be  an  evanescent  interest.  Many 
there  are  who  apply  this  rule  to  Religion ;  and  who 
would  measure  the  reality  and  force  of  its  influence 
on  the  character  by  the  frequency  and  explicitness  of 
its  appearance  in  our  discourse.  If  we  are  truly 
penetrated  with  the  same  highest  concerns  ;  if  we  are 
standing  in  the  same  attitude  before  God ;  if  the 
same  solemnity  of  life  covers  us  with  its  cloud,  and 
45 


530  THE    SPHEBE    OF    SII/ENCE. 

the  same  glory  of  hope  guides  us  by  its  fire ;  —  how 
can  we  do  otherwise  than  always  speak  together  of  a 
lot  so  awful  and  a  faith  so  high  ?  May  it  not  be 
fairly  doubted,  whether  those,  who  are  drawn  by  no 
experience,  inspired  by  no  joy,  melted  by  no  sorrow, 
to  break  their  reserve  on  these  things,  have  any  de- 
vout belief  of  them  at  all. 

There  seems  to  be  a  show  of  reason  in  this ;  and 
when  it  is  urged  on  the  modest  and  self-distrustful, 
they  often  gather  from  it  a  lesson  of  inward  reproach, 
and  know  not  how  to  answer.  Yet  the  appeal  has 
always  failed  to  gain  its  end.  It  has  not  unsealed  the 
lips  of  men  to  converse  of  divine,  as  they  would  of 
human,  things  ;  a  certain  loneliness,  which  cannot  be 
removed,  still  hangs  over  their  loftiest  relations  ;  and 
they  are  stricken,  as  with  dumbness,  to  one  another, 
before  God.  There  is,  indeed,  a  foundation  in  our 
unperverted  nature  for  this  repugnance  to  mingle 
talk  and  worship,  to  look  into  another's  eye  and  say 
the  thought  of  inward  prayer  ;  and  it  is  a  harsh  and 
false  interpretation  to  take  such  repugnance  as  the 
sign  of  irreligion.  Many  an  earnest  and  devout 
heart,  too  lowly  to  teach  others,  too  quiet  to  pro- 
claim itself,  you  may  find  watching  the  scene  of 
human  things  through  a  constant  atmosphere  of 
piety ;  recognizing  a  holy  light  on  all ;  touching  each 
duty  with  a  gentle  and  willing  love ;  yet  saying  not 
a  word,  because  unable  to  make  a  special  tale  of  that 
which  is  but  the  truth  of  nature.  And  many  a  family 
group  may  be  observed,  gathering  round  the  decline 
of  some  venerated  life,  well  knowing  whither  it  fast 
tends ;  and  he  who  discerns  nothing  beneath  the  sur- 
face, may  think  it  but  a  worldly  thing,  that  all  the 
care  seems  to  be  spent  in  providing  outward  allevia- 


THE    SPHERE    OF    SILENCE.  531 

tion,  and  sheltering  from  inward  shock,  and  keeping 
some  glow  of  tempered  cheerfulness  about  the  slack- 
ening pulse  and  deepening  chill  of  life.  But  an  eye 
less  obtuse  may  often  read  a  secret  meaning  in  all 
this,  and  recognize  in  it  the  symbol  of  an  unspoken 
mystery ;  the  sacred  hope,  the  perfect  trust,  the  will 
laid  low,  the  love  raised  high,  make  their  confession 
by  faithful  act,  and  learn  the  right  of  a  holy  silence. 
And,  assuredly,  he  to  whose  ready  speech  the  sancti- 
ties most  quickly  come,  who  has  no  difficulty  in 
running  over  everlasting  things,  and  never  pauses  at 
the  awful  name,  and  can  coin  the  words  for  what  is 
most  dear  and  deep,  is  not  often  the  most  truly 
devout.  The  sects  and  classes,  moreover,  who  make 
the  greatest  point  of  bringing  their  Christianity  into 
the  drawing-room,  the  street  or  the  senate,  after  be- 
guiling you  into  respect  and  perhaps  admiration, 
continually  let  out  the  other  half  of  the  truth  by 
some  surprising  coarseness  or  some  selfish  intolerance. 
Yet,  in  spite  of  these  appearances,  it  is  altogether 
true  that '  of  the  abundance  of  the  heart,  the  mouth 
speaketh.' 

Language  has  two  functions,  easily  distinguished, 
yet  easily  forgotten.  It  is  an  instrument  of  com- 
munication with  one  another ;  and  an  instrument  of 
thought  within  ourselves.  Plato  used  to  say  that 
Thought  and  Speech  are  the  same ;  only  that  thought 
is  the  mind's  silent  dialogue  with  itself.*  It  need 

*  The  definition  is  so  apposite,  that  I  am  tempted  to  subjoin  it :  — 
4TE.      Ovxovv  diuvoia  piv  xai  ioyog  ravrov  •  niijV  o  fiiv  ivrbf  rift 

ifjvxyg  nqog  avTitv  Sidioyog  ai'iv  (piuvijg  yiyroittyos  Tovr'  avrb   itfiiv 

i7itarotiaa9t],  diavota  ; 
@EAI.      Haw  pit>  ovv. 

Sophisti,  263,  E.  The  same  thought  is  more  fully  presented  in  the 
Thesetetus,  189,  E.  190,  A. 


532  THE    SPHERE    OF    SILENCE. 

not,  however,  be  always  silent ;  in  its  higher  moods 
it  presses  for  utterance  ;  it  cannot  go  on  to  rise  with- 
out casting  away  the  burthen  of  its  words  ;  and  out- 
bursts of  song  and  pulses  of  prayer  are  as  successive 
strokes  of  the  ever-beating  wing  of  aspiration.  But 
in  this  we  want  no  one  to  hear  us ;  we  could  bear  no 
watchful  human  presence ;  the  voice  is  but  the  relief 
to  the  spirit  overcharged  ;  and  our  nature  could  not 
thus  revolve  in  its  own  circuit,  except  in  the  loneliness 
which  shelters  it  from  foreign  attractions.  Speech 
therefore  assumes  two  forms ;  Converse  and  Solilo- 
quy ;  the  one  intended  to  convey  our  thought  abroad ; 
the  other  to  detain  it  at  home;  the  one,  opening 
what  we  wish  ;  the  other  what  we  hide  ;  the  one,  the 
common  talk  of  life;  the  other  equivalent  to  silence, 
except  to  those  who  may  overhear.  Of  the  latter 
only  did  Jesus  say,  that  'out  of  the  abundance  of  the 
heart,  the  mouth  speaketh.'  He  knew  that  what  men 
utter  face  to  face  is  often  far  different  from  the 
real  thought  of  their  minds ;  that  they  are  no  less 
ashamed  of  their  best  feelings  than  of  their  worst ; 
and  that,  by  watching  the  coin  of  words  that  passes 
between  them  in  the  open  commerce  of  life,  you  can 
ill  judge  of  the  secret  wealth  or  insolvency  of  their 
souls.  To  estimate  them  aright,  you  must  wait  till 
the  company  disperse ;  and  linger  near  them  when 
they  speak,  amid  the  silence  of  God,  not  to  others, 
but  from  themselves.  Nor  does  this  divergence  of 
their  private  thought  from  their  public  conversation 
imply  the  slightest  approach  to  artfulness  and  duplic- 
ity ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  possibly  the  most  artless 
of  whom  it  is  most  true.  The  false  man  has  lost  the 
half  of  himself  which  makes  this  variance.  The 
double  dealer  has  but  a  single  nature;  but  in  the 


THE    SPHEEE    OF    SILENCE.  533 

pure  and  guileless,  there  are  two  souls  ;  of  which  the 
one  comes  forward  amid  human  things  with  quick 
and  genial  speech,  while  the  other  ever  sits  with 
finger  on  the  lips.  The  one  achieves  its  end,  with 
energy  and  stir  like  that  of  the  city's  industry ;  the 
other  noiselessly,  like  the  spring  growth  of  forest  and 
of  field ;  the  one  opens  gladly  out,  the  other  shrinks, 
as  if  scorched,  within,  at  the  light  of  the  human  eye. 
Our  nature  is  as  a  flower  that  shines  of  itself  with 
one  color  by  night,  and  reflects  from  the  sun  another 
by  day ;  and  those  who  see  only  its  borrowed  gayety 
at  noon,  know  nothing  of  its  own  fainter  beauty  be- 
neath the  stars.  The  truth  is,  the  presence  of  our 
fellows,  and  the  exchange  of  looks  and  words  with 
them,  are  the  great  instruments  of  self-consciousness, 
and  are  suitable  for  all  those  parts  and  faculties  of  a 
man  which  are  improved  by  study  and  attention. 
But  there  are  elements  of  our  being  that  were  never 
meant  for  this ;  which  change  their  character  by 
being  breathed  upon  ;  or  which  vanish  in  the  sound 
that  utters  them.  They  will  insist  on  flowing 
unobstructed  in  their  natural  bed  ;  and  if  gossip  will 
arrest  and  dam  them  up,  they  are  turned  from  the 
torrent  of  health  into  the  marsh  of  pestilence. 

There  are  things  too  low  to  be  spoken  of;  which 
indeed  become  low  by  being  spoken  of.  The  appe- 
tites are  of  this  kind.  They  were  meant  to  be  the 
beginnings  of  action,  not  the  end  of  speech;  and 
under  the  dropping  of  words,  they  are  as  wholesome 
food  analyzed  into  constituent  poisons.  God  lights 
that  fire,  and  does  not  want  our  breath  to  blow  it,  or 
the  fuel  of  our  thought  to  feed  it.  The  inferior  im- 
pulses in  man  are  glorified  by  being  placed  at  the 
natural  disposal  of  higher  sentiments;  they  are  sub- 
45* 


534  THE    SPHERE    OF    SILENCE. 

mitted  to  the  transforming  power  of  generous  aspira- 
tion and  great  ideas.  Wielded  by  these,  they  are  far 
above  the  level  of  Sense ;  and  are  not  only  controlled 
by  conscience,  but  dignified  by  the  light  of  beauty, 
and  ennobled  by  the  alliance  of  affection.  Their  just 
action  is  secured  far  less  by  repressive  discipline 
against  them,  than  by  nourishing  the  strength  of  the 
humanities  that  use  them ;  by  keeping  them  wholly 
inattentive  to  themselves;  by  breaking  every  mirror 
in  which  their  own  face  may  be  beheld.  Purity 
consists,  not  in  the  ascetic  abnegation  of  the  lower, 
but  in  a  Christian  emerging  of  the  lower  in  the 
higher;  in  the  presence  of  a  divine  perception  so 
quick  to  recoil  from  degradation,  that  avoidance 
aforethought  need  not  be  studiously  provided.  And 
purity  of  mind  is  forfeited,  less  by  exceeding  rules  of 
moderation,  than  by  needing  them;  —  by  attention 
to  the  inferior  pleasures,  as  such.  There  might  be 
less  of  moral  evil  in  the  rude  banquet  of  heroic  times, 
marked  perhaps  by  excess,  but  warmed  by  social 
enthusiasm,  and  idealized  by  lofty  minstrelsy,  than  in 
many  a  meal  of  the  prudent  dietician,  setting  a  police 
over  his  sensations,  and  weighing  out  the  scruples  of 
enjoyment  for  his  palate.  Not  rules  of  quantity,  but 
habits  of  forgetfulness,  constitute  our  emancipation 
from  the  animal  nature.  You  cannot  make  any 
good  thing  of  the  voluptuary's  mind,  regulate  it  as 
you  may.  It  may  be  covered  over  with  an  external 
disguise;  it  may  be  strengthened  by  self-restraint  for 
social  use ;  but,  with  all  its  wise  ways,  what  trace 
can  God  behold  there  of  his  own  image  ?  He  sees  at 
best  Aristotle's  'rational  animal,'  not  one  of  Christ's 
'  children  of  the  Highest.'  Most  futile  is  the  attempt 
so  prevalent  in  our  days,  to  base  the  morality  of  the 


THE    SPHERE    OF    SILENCE.  535 

appetites  on  physiology;  to  open  the  way  to  heaven 
with  the  dissecting  knife;  to  give  up  the  Prophets  for 
the  '  Constitution  of  Man ; '  and  with  a  gospel  of  di- 
gestion to  replace  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  Let 
us  indeed  accept  such  help  as  may  come  from  this 
source  also ;  but  let  us  rate  it  at  its  worth,  and  assign 
to  it  its  place.  Good  for  the  remedy  of  bodily  disease, 
it  is  not  good  for  the  formation  of  character ;  and  it 
is  odious  as  the  substitute  for  religion.  Whoever 
found  himself  nearer  God  by  inspecting  drawings  of 
internal  inflammation?  There  may  be  those,  to 
whom  the  check  of  abjectness  and  fear  may  be  of 
service,  and  who  must  walk  an  hospital  before  they 
can  respect  a  law.  But  as  an  element  of  education 
this  kind  of  teaching  is  fatally  misplaced.  The  ideas 
it  communicates  cannot  co-exist  with  the  high,  de- 
vout affections,  which  are  the  natural  guides  and 
safeguards  of  a  pure  heart;  they  can  occur  only  in 
uneasy  succession  with  them,  and  are  repelled  by 
them  with  unconquerable  antipathy.  Indeed,  in  good 
minds,  not  needing  recovery  from  fall,  all  mere  physi- 
cal and  prohibitive  morality  is  liable  to  be  a  source 
of  direct  contamination.  By  simply  talking  about 
your  rules,  you  may  turn  innocence  into  guilt.  The 
mere  discussion  of  a  habit  necessarily  converts  it  into 
a  self-conscious  indulgence  or  privation ;  and  thereby 
totally  alters  its  real  character  and  its  moral  relations; 
and  may  make  that  evil  which  was  not  evil  before. 
And  thus,  the  very  cure  of  outward  excess  may  some- 
times be  attended  with  the  creation  of  inward  corrup- 
tion ;  and  what  was  harmless  till  you  mentioned  it, 
becomes  sinful  by  being  named.  So  are  words  great 
powers  in  this  world ;  not  only  telling  what  things 
are,  but  making  them  what  else  they  would  not  be; 


536  THE    SPHEKE    OF    SILENCE. 

and  they  cannot  encroach  upon  the  sphere  of  silence, 
without  desecrating  the  sanctuary  of  nature,  and 
banishing  the  presence  of  God. 

There  are  also  things  too  high  to  be  spoken  of; 
and  which  cease  to  be  high,  by  being  made  objects 
of  ordinary  speech.  Language  occupies  the  mid- 
region  of  our  life,  between  the  wants  that  ground  us 
on  the  earth,  and  the  affections  that  lift  us  to  the 
skies.  If  we  were  all  animal,  we  could  not  use  it ;  if 
we  were  as  God,  we  should  give  it  up,  and  lapse, 
like  him,  into  eternal  silence.  It  is  the  instrument  of 
business,  of  learning,  of  mutual  understanding,  of 
common  action ;  the  tool  of  the  Intellect  and  the 
Will ;  the  glory  of  a  nature  more  than  brutal,  the 
mark  of  one  less  than  the  divine ;  as  truly  the  char- 
acteristic of  labor  in  the  mind,  as  the  sweat  of  the 
brow  of  the  body's  toil ;  emblem  at  once  of  blessing 
and  of  curse;  recalling  an  Eden  half  remembered, 
while  we  work  in  the  desert  that  can  never  be  forgot. 
When  we  try  to  raise  it  to  higher  functions,  it  only 
spoils  the  thing  it  cannot  speak ;  which  becomes,  like 
an  uttered  secret,  a  treasure  killed  and  gone.  Re- 
ligion in  the  soul  is  like  a  spirit  hiding  in  enshadowed 
forests;  call  it  into  the  staring  light,  it  is  exhaled 
and  seen  no  more;  or  as  the  whispering  of  God 
among  the  trees;  peer  about  behind  the  leaves,  and 
it  is  not  there.  Men  in  deep  reverence  do  not  talk  to 
one  another,  but  remain  with  hushed  mind  side  by 
side.  Each  one  feels,  though  he  cannot  tell  how  it 
is,  that  words  limit  what  faith  declares  unlimited; 
that  they  divide  and  break  to  pieces,  what  it  compre- 
hends and  embraces  as  a  whole;  that  they  distribute 
into  dead  members  what  it  discerns  as  a  life  of 
beauty  indivisible;  that  they  reduce  to  successive 


THE    SPHERE    OF    SILENCE.  537 

propositions  what  it  adores  as  a  simultaneous  and 
everlasting  reality.  The  whole  operation  of  the  mind 
in  communicating  by  speech  is  the  direct  opposite  of 
that  which  bends  in  worship ;  the  one  laboring  after 
definite  conceptions  and  scientific  reasoning;  the 
other  intuitively  evading  both,  and  bursting  the  fet- 
ters which  the  provinces  of  nature  own,  but  the  infini- 
ty of  God  rejects.  Hence  it  is  that  men  lower  the 
voice  as  they  distantly  approach  these  things,  and 
deem  it  fit  to  let  their  words  be  few.  Spoken  rever- 
ence passes  into  cant;  or,  in  more  elaborated  forms, 
into  philosophy.  I  do  not  say  that  there  may  not  be 
an  intermediate  period,  when  earnest  men  are  able 
to  establish  a  mutual  language  of  religion  which, 
in  their  day,  is  true  to  them ;  but  from  the  moment 
of  its  first  freshness  it  begins  to  fade ;  and  the  hour 
of  its  birth  is  the  beginning  of  its  death.  And  soon 
the  devoutest  spirits  will  be  those  that  say  the  least; 
and  the  currency,  once  priceless,  now  debased,  will 
remain  chiefly  with  Pharisees  and  professional  di- 
vines. True,  there  is  a  sceptic,  as  well  as  a  devout 
silence  on  the  highest  things.  But  who  is  there  that 
cannot  tell  at  a  glance  the  difference  between  the 
shrinking  of  unbelief,  and  the  shrinking  of  reverence  ? 
Look  only  at  their  eye ;  and  the  shallow  gloss  of  the 
one  is  not  like  the  deep  light  of  the  other.  The  one 
pushes  the  matter  externally  away ;  the  other  hides  it 
internally  from  view.  The  one  is  averse  to  take  the 
divine  ideas  into  the  mind;  the  other  recoils  from 
putting  them  out.  The  one  yields  to  the  repulsion 
of  dislike;  the  other  exercises  the  shelter  of  an  in- 
effable love.  There  was  truth,  and  not  absurdity,  in 
the  Friends'  silent  meeting  before  God ;  —  a  truth 
indeed  too  great  and  high  for  a  permanent  institution 


538  THE    SPHEEE    OF    SILENCE. 

addressed  to  our  poor  nature,  but  affording  an  in- 
fallible memorial  of  the  genuine  inspiration  that  once 
breathed  through  that  noble  people.  And  what  even 
were  the  whining  voice  and  tremulous  speech,  but 
the  instinctive  attempt  to  escape  from  the  vulgari- 
ties of  life,  and  reach  the  strange  music,  broken,  dis- 
sonant, and  sweet,  in  which  divine  and  human  things 
conflict  and  reconcile  themselves?  Nor  is  it  essen- 
tially different  in  any  worship ;  for,  though  we  meet 
together,  it  is  not  to  speak  with  one  another;  it  is  not 
even  to  be  spoken  to  and  taught;  for  that  could  pro- 
duce nothing  but  theology ;  if  it  is  not  for  absolute 
silence  of  devotion  (which  were  best,  if  it  were 
possible),  it  is  only  for  soliloquy ;  which  is  but  the 
thought  before  God,  of  one,  for  the  guidance  of  a 
silence  before  God,  of  all.  It  is  to  Him  we  lay 
ourselves  open,  and  not  to  our  neighbor;  only, 
the  sense  of  brethren  near  who  have  concerns  like 
our  own  that  bring  them  hither,  who  feel  with 
us  his  mystic  touch,  and  look  up  to  his  heavenly 
hope,  and  remember  the  healing  sorrows  of  his 
mercy,  and  expect  his  early  call,  and  trust  his  ever- 
lasting shelter,  —  is  a  mighty  help  to  those  deep 
realities  which  are  too  great  except  for  the  consen- 
taneous grasp  of  our  collective  soul.  Prayer,  like 
poetry,  can  never  be  anything  but  thought  aloud;  if 
ever  it  is  '  said  for  the  sake  of  them  that  stand  by,'  it 
is  a  mockery  and  a  pretence,  from  which  every  soul 
that  is  akin  to  Christ  will  shrink  with  abhorrence 
and  with  awe ;  and  which  none  who  had  been  alto- 
gether steeped  in  his  spirit  could  ever  ascribe  to 
him.  Nor  let  any  one  say  that  this  makes  the  office 
of  religion  one  of  uncertain  imagination,  transient  as 
the  colors  of  beauty,  and  vague  as  the  impressions  of 


THE    SPHEBE    OF    SILENCE.  539 

a  dream.  Never  do  we  more  completely  deceive 
ourselves,  than  when  we  fancy  that  the  work  of  the 
understanding  is  durable,  while  that  of  our  richer 
genius  is  evanescent;  that  what  we  know  is  solid, 
what  we  aspire  after  and  adore  in  thought  is  unsub- 
stantial; that  the  achievements  of  physical  discovery 
are  the  fixed  products  of  time,  while  the  visions  of 
poetry  are  but  the  adornments  of  a  passing  age. 
How  plainly  does  historical  experience  contradict 
this  estimate !  Of  no  nation,  of  no  period,  within 
the  limits  of  known  and  transmitted  civilization,  does 
the  most  advanced  science  remain  true  for  us ;  while 
of  none  has  the  genuine  poetry  perished.  Thales 
and  Archimedes  have  been  obsolete  for  centuries; 
while  old  Homer  is  fresh  as  ever,  and  delights  the 
modern  school-boy  only  less  than  he  did  the  Greek 
hero.  The  acuteness  of  the  Athenian  intellect  has 
left  us  no  account  of  any  law  of  nature,  which  the 
greatest  masters  of  ancient  knowledge  deciphered  as 
we  do  now ;  but  the  strains  of  Job  and  the  rapt  song 
of  Isaiah  will  never  be  worn  out,  while  a  human  soul 
is  on  the  earth,  and  the  divine  heaven  above  it.  The 
readings  of  philosophy,  the  creeds  of  theology,  are 
alike  transitory ;  but  the  discernment  of  sacred  truth 
and  beauty  is  perpetual  and  without  essential  change. 
Never  knowing  but  in  part,  we  find  all  our  knowledge 
successively  vanishing  away;  but  in  adoring  the 
grandeur,  feeling  the  solemnity,  and  aspiring  to  the 
perfection  of  the  whole,  the  inspirations  of  genius 
and  yearnings  of  faith  are  consentaneous  and  eternal. 


XLIII. 

THE    SPHERE    OF   SILENCE. 

II.  GOD'S. 
JOHN  i.  1  &  14. 

IN  THE  BEGINNING  WAS  THE  WORD  ;  AND  THE  WORD  WAS  WITH  GOD  ; 
AND  THE  WORD  WAS  GOD.  AND  THE  WORD  WAS  MADE  FLESH,  AND 
DWELT  AMONG  US  (AND  WE  BEHELD  HIS  GLORY, THE  GLORY  AS  OF 

THE  FATHER'S  ONLY-BORN)  FULL  or  GRACE  AND  TRUTH. 

HUMAN  speech,  it  has  already  been  observed,  is 
employed  in  two  different  ways,  issuing  from  states 
of  mind  distinct  and  almost  opposite.  We  speak  to 
impart  information ;  and  we  speak  in  confession  of 
ourselves ;  in  intentional  address  to  the  minds  of 
others,  or  in  unconscious  revelation  of  our  own  ; 
drawn  by  an  external  end  which  we  wish  to  compass, 
or  propelled  by  internal  feeling  which  we  cannot  but 
express.  In  the  one  case,  we  begin  with  our  purpose, 
and  then  lay,  with  such  skill  as  we  can  command, 
our  train  of  approach  towards  its  realization ;  in  the 
other,  we  start  from  the  emotion  that  occupies  us, 
and  advance  a  long  line  of  tendency,  never  lawless 
yet  ever  unforeseen.  The  one  discloses  the  policy 
at  which  our  action  aims ;  the  other,  the  affection 
whence  it  issues.  In  the  one,  we  teach,  we  expound, 
we  report  the  past,  we  predict  the  future ;  in  the 
other,  we  remember,  we  hope,  we  paint  the  soul's  im- 
mediate vision,  and  own  its  everlasting  faith.  In  the 


THE    SPHERE    OF    SILEXCE.  541 

one,  we  talk  and  reason  ;  in  the  other,  we  meditate 
and  sing.  History  and  science  are  the  birth  of  the 
one ;  art  and  religion,  of  the  other ;  morals  and 
philosophy,  of  both. 

But  man  is  not  the  only  being  that  has  this  two- 
fold voice.  God  also  puts  to  a  double  engagement 
his  silent  instruments  of  expression.  He  too  lives 
amid  a  company  of  minds ;  and  to  them  he  has  to 
say  something  of  what  already  he  has  done,  and  of 
what  he  yet  designs  to  do,  —  to  communicate  the 
order  of  the  scene  on  which  they  stand,  and  put  into 
the  hand  of  expectation  a  clue  of  faithful  guidance. 
But  he  also  is  a  Mind,  reserving  within  himself  infi- 
nite powers,  ever  awake  and  moving  ;  thought,  large 
as  space,  and  deep  and  solemn  as  the  sea ;  holiness, 
stern  as  the  mountains,  and  pure  as  the  breath  that 
sighs  around  them ;  a  mercy  quick  as  the  light,  and 
gentle  as  the  tints  that  make  it.  It  is  not  for  these 
to  remain  inert  and  repressed,  as  though  they  were 
not  They  must  have  way,  and  have  their  overflow  ; 
and  if  only  we  place  our  spirits  right,  we  may  catch 
the  blessed  flood,  and  find  it  as  the  waters  of  regen- 
eration. Beyond  and  behind  every  definite  end  of 
which  it  is  needful  to  apprise  us,  there  actually 
exists  in  the  divine  nature  and  indefinite  affluence  of 
living  perfection,  which  cannot  go  for  nothing  in  the 
universe.  It  may  have  not  a  word  to  say  to  others  : 
but  whispers  will  escape  it  on  its  own  account ;  it 
may  not  be  heard  ;  and  yet  articulately  overheard ; 
and,  could  we  only  find  the  focus  of  those  stray 
tones,  we  should  understand  more  than  any  knowl- 
edge can  tell ;  we  should  learn  the  very  prayers  that 
Heaven  makes  for  only  Heaven  to  hear ;  and  should 
catch  the  soliloquy  of  God.  And  not  only  can  we 

46 


542  .       THE    SPHEKE    OF    SILENCE. 

find  it,  but  we  are  ever  in  it ;  and  beneath  the  dome 
of  this  universe,  which  is  all  centre  and  no  circum- 
ference, we  cannot  stand,  where  the  musings  of  the 
eternal  mind  do  not  murmur  round  us,  and  the 
visions  of  his  lonely,  loving  thought,  appear. 

Works  of  science  and  history  are  the  medium  in 
which  men  speak  to  us ;  works  of  poetry  and  art, 
that  in  which  they  speak  from  themselves.     With 
these    the    heavenly    dialects    precisely    correspond ; 
being  in  fact  the  great  originals,  whereof  these  are 
but  faint  echoes.     Outward  objects  of  science  and  his- 
tory,—  the  phenomena  recorded  by  the  one,  and  the 
events  narrated  by   the   other,  —  all   the   calculable 
happenings  of  the  frame   and   order   of  things,  are 
God's  didactic  address,  in  which  he  gives  us  the  infor- 
mation we  most  need  about  his  ways.     And  that 
which  awakens  poetry  and  art,  the  invisible  light  that 
bathes  the  world,  —  the  nameless  essence  that  fills  it, 
—  the  devout  uplifted  look  of  all  things,  —  is  the  per- 
sonal effusion  of  God's  spirit,  by  which  the  secret 
spreads  of  what  he  is.     In  the  System  of  nature  and 
life  he  teaches  us  his  will ;  in  the  Beauty  of  nature 
and  life,  he  meditates  from  himself.     If  we  and  all 
similar  beings  were  away,  the  former  would  become 
unmeaning ;  and  the  busy  movements,  the  mighty 
forces,  the   mechanical    successions,   the    breathless 
haste  of  moments,  the   patient  roll  of  ages,  would 
seem  to  be  superseded,  and  to  be  a  mere  senseless 
stir,  were  they  not  in  sympathy  with  teeming  life,  and 
a  discipline  of  countless  minds.     But  in  our  presence 
or  our  absence,  the   everlasting  beauty  would  still 
remain ;  all  that  lay  beneath  the  eternal  eye  would 
sleep  in  the  serene  light,  and  wait  no  leave  from  us. 
That  is  a  thought  which  God  had  writ  only  for  him- 


IHE    SPHERE    OF    SILENCE.  543 

self ;  a  Word  of  his  that  asks  no  audience.  Yet  he 
cares  not  to  hide  it  from  us ;  and  he  has  made  us  so 
like  himself,  that  a  glance  suffices  to  interpret,  and  to 
fill  us  with  his  blessed  inspiration. 

God  is  related  to  his  works  and  ways,  j  ust  as 
genius  to  the  creations  of  poetry  or  art  that  issue 
from  it ;  and  both  must  be  apprehended  in  the  same 
manner,  —  by  the  softened  gaze  of  reverence,  not  by 
the  dry  sharp-sightedness  of  knowledge.  All  our 
acute  study  of  such  things  is  but  a  delusion  and 
a  flattery,  if  we  suppose  it  really  to  open  to  us  the 
sources  from  which  they  come.  You  may  analyze, 
if  you  will,  the  dramas  of  Shakspeare,  the  paintings 
of  Raffaelle,  the  music  of  Beethoven ;  you  may 
disengage  for  separate  inspection,  action,  character, 
sentiment,  and  costume;  grouping  and  colors  ;  theme 
and  treatment;  and  you  may  thus  know  each  com- 
position at  every  turn  ;  discern  its  structure ;  recog- 
nize its  proportions ;  lay  your  finger  on  its  happiest 
lights.  But  do  you  reproduce  the  state  of  mind  that 
first  created  it  ?  Do  you  get  upon  the  traces  of  the 
author's  way  of  work  ?  Are  your  rules  and  laws, 
when  you  have  drawn  them  out,  a  faithful  represen- 
tation of  the  soul  from  whose  expression  you  have 
deduced  them  ?  Can  they  spread  beneath  any  other 
view,  the  many-clustered  plan  of  life,  as  it  lay  beneath 
the  player's  large  and  genial  eye ;  or  fill  the  world 
again  with  the  rich  tints  and  noble  forms  that  re- 
flected their  repose  upon  the  painter's  face ;  or  send 
through  any  second  heart  the  wild  night-winds  that 
sighed  and  sung  through  the  deaf  musician's  soul  ? 
This,  you  will  own,  your  criticism  cannot  do.  At 
best,  it  does  but  sketch  an  artificial  method,  which  if 
it  could  be  perfectly  obeyed,  might  be  a  substitute  for 


544  THE    SPHERE    OF    SILENCE. 

the  natural  one.  Only,  it  cannot  be  obeyed  ;  and 
when  the  attempt  is  made  it  produces,  not  a  living 
likeness  but  a  dead  imitation;  human  nature  has 
turned  into  wax,  and  the  heavens  flattened  to  the 
canvas,  and  the  passion  of  melody  reduced  to  an  un- 
easiness among  the  strings.  The  canons  of  taste,  so 
far  from  being  an  approach  to  the  mind  of  the  artist, 
are  the  extreme  point  of  departure  from  it ;  being  the 
expression  of  a  dissecting  self-consciousness,  the  in- 
trusion of  which  would  have  been  fatal  to  his  work. 
Now  this  principle  appears  to  me  to  be  rigorously 
applicable  to  our  contemplation  of  the  works  and 
ways  of  God.  What  we  call  Science  is  nothing  but 
our  critical  interpretation  of  nature  ;  our  reduction  of 
it  into  intelligible  pieces  or  constituents,  that  we  may 
view  successively  what  we  cannot  grasp  at  once. 
And  it  no  more  exhibits  to  us  the  real  sources  from 
which  creation  sprang,  or  the  modes  of  its  appearing, 
than  the  critic's  system  shows  us  the  poet's  soul. 
The  supposition  is  as  derogatory  to  God  in  the  one 
case,  as  it  is  insulting  to  genius  in  the  other.  The 
books  which  repeat  to  us  the  laws  of  the  physical 
world  usually  mislead  us  on  this  matter.  They  enu- 
merate certain  forces,  with  which  they  pretend  to  be 
on  the  most  intimate  footing,  and  which  are  able  to 
do  great  things  in  the  universe ;  and  by  putting  them 
together  in  this  way  and  that,  they  show  what  events 
would  come  about;  they  then  point  out,  that  such 
events  did  actually  occur ;  and  think  it  proved  that 
the  real  phenomena  are  manufactured  after  their 
pattern,  and  truly  spring  from  the  causes  in  their 
list.  Thus  Newton  is  said  to  have  detected  the 
powers  that  determine  the  planetary  orbits.  He 
found  them,  we  are  assured,  to  be  but  two ;  one,  the 


THE    SPHEBE    OF    SILENCE.  545 

primary    impulse    that    commenced   the    motion   of 
each  globe,  and  sent  it  careering   on   its  way ;   the 
other,  the  constant  attraction  that  curves  it  ever  to 
the    Sun.      So   fixed   is   this   representation   in   our 
thoughts   by  the  exposition  of  Astronomers,  that  it 
is  generally  accepted  as  a  true  picture  of  the  fact ; 
and,  in  order  to  trace  the  ellipse  of  our  Earth  or  Mars, 
the  two  forces  are  supposed  to  have  been,  once  upon 
a  time,  actually  put  together,  and,  like  the  separate 
parts   of  a   machine,  brought    to   co-operate.      Yet, 
fondly  as  this  image  clings  to  our  fancy,  no  thought- 
ful  man   can   seriously   hold   to   so   gross  an  error. 
Was  there  then  really  a  certain  moment  in  the  past, 
when  the  divine  hand  shot  forth  the  globes,  and  then 
condensed  into  the  Sun  the  power  to  bend  them  into 
their  ever-circling  course?    Is  it  an  historic  fact  in  the 
universe,  that  this   artillery  of  the   skies   was   once 
played  off,  and  might  be  seen  by  any  spirit-witness 
passing  by  ?     No  ;  the  planets  are  not  a  mere  set  of 
bowls  ;  nor  was  the  great  court  of  the  Zodiac  bound- 
ed and  made  plane  for  such  a  game  as  that !     No 
one  can  well  believe  that  this  is  an  account  of  what 
actually  occurred ;  travel  through  the  Past  with  the 
most  vigilant  eye,  you  nowhere  arrive  at  such  event. 
The  imagination  of  it  is  pure  fiction,  which  begins 
and  ends  with  the  mind  that  thinks  it.     What  then, 
you  will  say,  has  Newton  done  ?     He  has  done  this ; 
he  has  found  or  defined  two  forces  which,  if  they  were 
to  operate  under  the  conditions  prescribed,  would  pro- 
duce just  such  phenomena  as  we  observe.     He  has 
discovered  a  way  in  which  the  same  thing  might  be 
done ;   has   detected,  not   the   actual   causes,  but   a 
system  of  equivalents  that  will  serve  the  end  as  well. 
By  laying  these  before  us,  he  fulfils  the  aim  of  knowl- 
46* 


546  THE    SPHERE    OF    SILENCE. 

edge ;  he  gives  us  a  rule  by  which  to  compute  the 
course  of  nature,  and  from  the  present  to  foretell 
the  approaching  attitudes  of  things.  He  draws  a  true 
picture  for  us  of  all  the  future,  and  of  all  the  past, 
that  lies  within  the  existing  order ;  but  of  the  source 
of  that  order,  or  the  posture  of  affairs  before  it  rose, 
he  cannot  afford  the  faintest  glimpse.  And  so  is  it 
throughout  the  Sciences.  Whenever  they  give  you  a 
report  of  the  Causes,  they  tell  you,  not  the  real 
process,  but  its  equivalent ;  that  by  which  we  should 
work,  not  that  by  which  God  does  work.  The  op- 
tician enumerates  the  several  colors  of  which  light  is 
made ;  but  who  can  think  that  thus  we  learn  the 
order  of  God's  creation, —  and  that  first  he  provided 
the  yellow,  red,  and  blue,  and  then  put  them  together 
to  form  the  one  white  ray  ?  The  chemist  will  give  you 
a  list  of  what  he  finds  in  the  bursting  seed,  the  shoot- 
ing plant,  the  growing  animal ;  but  do  you  suppose 
that  the  Divine  hand  really  measures  these  doses  of 
hydrogen  and  carbon  ;  that  in  bringing  out  the  gentle 
grass,  and  shedding  its  glory  on  the  forest  tree,  and 
tracing  the  dear  human  face,  and  putting  a  strange 
depth  into  the  eye,  God  works  by  the  pharmacopoeia 
or  the  scale  of  chemical  equivalents  ?  Ah  no !  else 
were  he  not  the  Creator,  but  the  manufacturer,  of  this 
universe ;  a  mixer  of  ingredients ;  a  worker  in  wood 
and  iron ;  little  more  than  a  "Vulcan,  Neptune,  or 
^Esculapius,  with  another  name.  To  be  chief  artifi- 
cer, chief  dyer,  chief  engineer ;  to  be  able  to  construct 
a  world,  to  tincture  the  drapery  of  the  clouds,  and 
poise  the  clustered  stars;  —  this  is  not  to  be  the 
everlasting  God.  The  steps  by  which  we  slowly 
understand  are  not  the  order  in  which  he  instantly 
discerns  and  eternally  executes.  The  laws  which  we 


THE    SPHERE    OF    SILENCE.  547 

extract  are  but  the  patient  alphabet  in  which  he  spells 
out  successively  to  us  the  tendencies  of  his  sponta- 
neous thought.  They  are  the  rules  which  our  criti- 
cism draws  from  the  analysis  of  his  productions  ;  but, 
like  the  precepts  taken  from  the  study  of  ancient  art, 
they  express  our  afterthought,  not  his  forethought; 
and  though  they  are  a  true  light  to  pur  knowledge, 
they  are  a  false  shadow  on  our  Religion.  In  one 
sense,  no  doubt,  they  are  the  voice  of  God.  As  men 
talk  to  us  and  tell  us  what  they  have  been  doing  and 
what  they  still  intend  to  do ;  yet  shelter  from  us, 
perhaps  almost  from  themselves,  their  inmost  love 
and  worship;  so  here  does  God  adopt  our  speech, 
address  himself  to  our  instruction,  and  teach  us  the 
outward  purpose  of  his  Will ;  but  opens  not  the 
infinite  Well-spring  whence  all  the  power  and  order 
flow. 

Is  this  then  the  only  voice  of  his  that  comes  to  us 
from  the  physical  world?  It  is  the  only  voice  in 
which  he  directly  accosts  ns,  and  commands  our 
obedience.  But  we  are  always  in  his  presence  ;  and 
there  would  seem  to  be  when  he  forgets  that  we  are 
by ;  and  his  own  nature  confesses  itself  through  all 
the  loneliness  of  Space ;  and  we  may  apprehend  its 
essence  rather  than  its  act.  To  do  this,  we  have  but 
to  look  on  creation  as  a  picture,  instead  of  examin- 
ing it  as  a  machine.  It  must  fix  our  eye  as  a  work 
of  beauty,  not  as  a  structure  of  ingenuity.  The  sim- 
plest impressions  from  nature  are  the  deepest  and 
most  devout ;  and  to  get  back  to  these,  after  spoiling 
the  vision  with  the  artificial  glasses  of  Science,  is  the 
difficult  wisdom  of  the  pure  heart.  The  modest 
flower,  nestling  in  the  meadow  grass;  the  happy  tree, 
as  it  laughs  and  riots  in  the  wind ;  the  moody  cloud, 


548  THE    SPHERE    OF    SILENCE. 

knitting  its  brow  in  solemn  thought ;  the  river,  that 
has  been  flowing  all  night  long ;  the  sound  of  the 
thirsty  earth,  as  it  drinks  and  relishes  the  rain ;  these 
things  are  as  a  fall  hymn,  when  they  flow  from  the 
melody  of  nature,  but  an  empty  rhythm,  when  scanned 
by  the  finger  of  art.  The  soul,  as  it  sings,  cannot 
both  worship  and  beat  time.  The  rainbow,  inter- 
preted by  the  prism,  is  not  more  sacred,  than  when  it 
was  taken  for  the  memorandum  of  God's  promissory 
mercy,  painting  the  access  and  recess  of  his  thought. 
The  holy  Night,  that  shows  us  how  much  more  the 
sunshine  hides  than  it  reveals,  and  warns  us  that  the 
more  clearly  we  see  what  is  beneath  our  feet,  the 
more  astonishing  is  our  blindness  to  what  is  above 
our  heads,  is  less  divine,  when  watched  from  the 
observatory  of  science,  than  when  gazed  at  from  the 
oratory  of  private  prayer.  To  the  one  it  is  the 
ancient  architecture,  to  the  other  the  instant  medi- 
tation of  the  Most  High.  And  so  is  it  with  all  the 
common  features  of  our  world.  The  daily  light,  fresh 
as  a  young  child  every  morning,  and  dignified  as  the 
mellowness  of  age  at  even  ;  the  yearly  changes,  less 
fair  and  dear  to  our  infancy  than  to  our  maturity,  — 
the  weariness  of  nature  as  she  drops  her  leaves,  the 
glee  with  which  she  hangs  them  out  again,  —  the 
silver  mists  of  autumn,  the  slanting  rains  of  spring, 
the  sweeping  lines  of  drifted  snow ;  all  are  as  the 
natural  language  of  God,  —  the  turns  of  his  almighty 
thought, — to  the  spirit  that  lies  open  to  their  wonder  ; 
to  others  they  are  but  a  spinning  of  the  earth,  an 
evaporation  of  the  waters,  an  equilibrium  in  the 
winds 

It  is  the  same  in  the  case  of  human  life,  as  in  that 
of  the  outward  world.    There  also  our  knowledge  does 


THE    SPHERE    OF    SILENCE.  549 

not  represent  God's  ways ;  our  knowledge  being  a 
critical  deduction  of  rules  which  his  ways  indeed  have 
furnished  but  did  not  follow.  There  also  we  should 
think  of  him,  not  as  constructing  mechanically  for  an 
end,  but  creating  spontaneously  from  himself.  In  our 
review  of  ancient  or  modern  nations,  wre  are  anxious 
to  account  for  the  peculiarities  that  mark  them,  and 
the  influence  they  have  had  upon  mankind;  and  we 
search  their  climate  and  geography,  their  inheritance 
of  language  and  tradition,  their  relative  position  and 
experience,  for  the  causes  of  their  special  genius  and 
institutions.  And  such  enumeration  is  invaluable  in 
its  fruits  of  practical  and  political  wisdom.  Only  let 
us  not  imagine  that  God  works  by  the  sort  of  com- 
position of  causes,  which  our  poor  intellect  is  obliged 
to  fancy  to  itself.  He  did  not  model  the  Hebrew,  or 
fabricate  the  Greek,  after  the  fashion  of  our  historical 
analysis,  saying  to  himself, '  This  climate  will  do,  but 
then  it  must  have  that  organization,  and  be  mixed 
with  such  and  such  sort  of  memories.'  It  were  con- 
temptible to  think  that  he  thus  moulds  and  serves  up 
the  nations,  like  one  that  holds  a  receipt-book  in  his 
hand.  And  so  too  with  the  individual  mind.  Phi- 
losophy, justly  curious  to  observe  the  structure  of  our 
faculties,  and  the  nature  of  those  wondrous  opera- 
tions by  which  man  alone,  of  all  creatures,  has 
acquired  a  history,  endeavors  to  untwine  the  finished 
web  of  thought,  and  lay  out  the  variegated  filaments, 
—  the  warp  of  constant  nature,  and  the  woof  of  flying 
experience,  — from  which  the  texture  seems  to  have 
been  composed.  And  this  also  is  well ;  opening  to 
us  the  deepest  problems,  and  yielding  many  useful 
lessons.  Only  we  must  not  suppose  that  God  makes 
men  after  the  pattern  of  Locke's  or  Mill's  human 


550  THE    SPHERE    OF    SILENCE. 

nature  ;  providing  the  raw  material  of  so  many  sim- 
ple ideas,  with  measured  lots  of  pleasure  and  pain, 
to  be  mixed  up  into  a  Plato,  or  fused  down  into  a 
Channing.  Nor  ought  we  to  think  that  he  precon- 
ceives a  particular  task  to  be  accomplished  for  the 
world,  and  then  proceeds  to  make  and  move  men, 
like  fitting  puppets  to  perform  it.  The  souls  of  the 
Sons  of  God  are  greater  than  their  business ;  and 
they  are  thrown  out,  not  to  do  a  certain  work,  but  to 
be  a  certain  thing ;  to  bear  some  sacred  lineaments, 
to  show  some  divine  tint,  of  the  Parent  Mind  from 
which  they  come.  The  mighty  spirits  of  our  race  are 
as  the  lyric  thoughts  of  God  that  drop  and  breathe 
from  his  Almighty  solitude  ; — transient  cords  flying 
forth  from  the  strings  as  his  solemn  hand  wanders 
over  the  possibilities  of  beauty.  One  only  finished 
expression  of  his  mind,  one  entire  symmetric  strain, 
has  fallen  on  our  world.  In  Christ  we  have  the  over- 
flowing Word,  the  deep  and  beautiful  soliloquy,  of 
the  Most  High ;  not  his  message  and  his  argument, 

—  for  in  that  there  were  no  Religion,  —  but  the  very 
poetry  of  God,  which  could   not  have  been  told  us 
face  to  face,  but  only   cast  in  meditation  upon  the 
silence  of  history.     Not  more  certainly  do  we  discern 
in  the  writings  of  Shakspeare  the  greatest  manifesta- 
tion of  human  genius,  than  in  the  reality  of  Christ 
the   highest   expression   of  the   Divine.      Not   more 
clearly  does  the  worship  of  the  saintly  soul,  breathing 
through  its  window  opened  to  the  midnight,  betray 
the  secrets  of  its  affections,  —  than  the  mind  of  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  reveals  the  perfect  thought  and  inmost 
love  of  the  All-ruling  God.      Were  he  the  only-born, 

—  the  solitary  self-revelation,  —  of  the  creative  Spirit, 
he  could  not  more  purely  open  the  mind  of  Heaven  ; 


THE    SPHERE    OF    SILENCE.  551 

being  the  very  Logos,  —  the  apprehensible  nature 
of  God, —  which,  long  unuttered  to  the  world,  and 
abiding  in  the  beginning  with  him,  has  now  come 
forth,  and  dwelt  among  us  full  of  grace  and  truth. 


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STEP    BY    STEP; 

OR, 

DELIA  ARLINGTON. 

A  FIRESIDE  STORY. 

BY    ANNA    ATHERN. 


"  The  gradual  development  of  an  excellent  character  is 
here  strikingly  portrayed.  It  is  a  book  of  superior  power, 
and  exhibits  a  deep  insight  into  the  human  heart.  As  a 
book  for  the  fireside,  it  will  accomplish  much  good,  and  de- 
serves a  wide  circulation." —  Ziori's  Herald. 

"  This  story  is  designed  to  illustrate  the  gradual  develop- 
ment of  the  religious  principle  in  the  different  virtues  and 
graces  of  the  Christian  life.  The  author  possesses  fine 
descriptive  powers,  and  knows  how  to  combine  circum- 
stances in  a  manner  to  secure  the  highest  effect.  It  is  an 
unpretending,  well  written,  and  agreeable  book."  —  Puritan 
Recorder. 


"  This  is  one  of  the  stories,  which,  beginning  to  read,  we 
like  to  pursue  ;  and  we  pursue  it  with  increasing  interest. 
It  is  one  of  the  best  books  of  this  description,  and  though  it 
is  designed  primarily  for  the  young,  all  ages  will  be  profited 
by  the  reading  of  it."  —  Christian  Freeman. 

"  This  story  was  written  to  meet  a  want  both  at  the  fire, 
side  and  in  the  Sunday  school  library.  Though  designed 
for  the  young,  it  will,  we  feel  quite  sure,  be  read  with 
pleasure  and  profit  by  the  parents  and  guardians  of  the 
young,  who  fear  the  effects  of  highly  wrought  fictions  on 
their  excited  minds.  It  is  a  beautifully  simple  story,  full  of 
the  best  lessons  of  social  and  domestic  life." —  Hunt's  Mer- 
chants Magazine. 
2 


O  STEP    BY    STEP. 

"  This  is  a  very  pleasant  story,  written  by  a  genuine 
New  England  lady,  and  opens  with  a  fireside  scene  in 
Buffalo,  in  which  a  father,  daughter,  and  uncle,  have  each 
an  appropriate  part.  It  has  more  the  aspect  of  actual  life, 
or  of  character  developed  by  the  training  of  Providence, 
than  of  the  inventive  creation  of  an  ingenious  mind,  and 
hence  we  think  the  entertainment  it  affords  may  be  indulged 
in  without  danger,  and  its  fictions  enjoyed  with  safety  to 
truth  and  virtue."  —  New  York  Chronicle. 


"  The  style  is  natural  and  pleasing,  and  in  parts  of  the 
book  there  is  a  genuine  pathos,  which  will  be  felt  in  reading 
it,  but  which  cannot  be  described.  It  is  a  volume  which 
every  mother  may  gratefully  place  in  the  hands  of  her 
daughters."  —  Boston  Evening  Gazette. 


"  It  is  a  practical,  genial  book,  devoid  of  everything  like 
cant,  or  mawkish  sentiments.  The  dialogue  is  exceedingly 
well  managed  ;  it  is  natural,  and  flows  on  like  the  conver- 
sation of  intelligent  persons.  The  aim  of  the  authoress 
seems  to  have  been  to  produce  a  work  of  an  elevated  tone, 
that  would  be  of  moral  service  by  those  who  perused  it. 
We  -commend  '  Delia  Arlington '  to  our  readers,  with  the 
confident  assurance  that  the  story  will  both  please  and  in- 
struct them."  —  Boston  Transcript. 

"  The  writer's  aim  in  this  volume  has  been,  by  describ- 
ing the  development  of  the  truly  religious  character  in  one 
young  female,  to  aid  it  in  others.  The  variety  of  the  scenes 
through  which  the  heroine  passes  in  city  and  country,  and 
of  the  circumstances  of  sorrow  and  of  happiness  which  al- 
ternately surround  her,  will  render  the  book  acceptable  to 
those  who  read  for  pleasure  ;  and  higher  qualities  will  win 
the  regard  of  those  who  read  for  improvement."  —  Christian 
Register. 


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